Bladerunner - the book of the film of the book - Part 1
by Jay Gee Three
Summary: Since the film is so different from the original novel, this is the novelisation of the film - 'I hate to have to say it, and you know how much I hate to. But we need an old pro. Someone like you, Decks.' - 'Get someone else transferred in.' - Bryant shook his head. 'No. I need experience. You. I can't be breaking in new stock at a time like this.' - Deckard downed the scotch.


**THE BLADERUNNER.**

 **or DO ANDROIDS DREAM?**

PROLOGUE

Sometime in the twentiy-first century, The Tyrell Corporation advanced robotics into the Nexus stage - it was virtually identical to a human - known as replicants. A more derogatory expression was, a skin-job.

The Tyrell Corporation was not the first to develop robotics, but it became the largest corporation at that time. This was partly because of the simulation of human life that they achieved, and they developed the Nexus generation at a time that it was needed by the human race. In their development off-Earth. Like evolution itself, the evolution of knowledge in this case, The Tyrell Corporation and the Nexus had adapted and superseded previous forms. When Tyrell developed the Nexus replicants, they made something that was markedly superior in strength and agility to the previous generations. They were at least equal, if not superior, in their intelligence, to the genetic designers who engineered them.

They were used off-world, as labourers, in the hazardous task of exploration and resource exploitation of 'hard rock', of the planets, moons, and meteors of the solar system.

After the bloody mutiny of a Nexus combat team on one of these colony's the replicant's were declared illegal, on-Earth as it is in the Heavens.

Police squads were set up to investigate and detect them, known as bladerunners - alongside them developed the business of freelance bounty hunters who competed with the bladerunners. Bladerunner or bounty-hunter, they were all licensed to shoot to kill replicants found to be trespassing on-Earth.

This was not known as murder, or termination, or assassination, or execution. It went by the inocuous expression - retirement.

Chapter 1.

When night fell - and it started to darken from mid afternoon on most days at any time of the year - the streets lights and the lights in homes and offices stretched all the way to the horizon, or, at least, as far as the hills that hemmed the city in. Within this thin spread of lights there were, all around, brighter clusters of lights which shone like mini galaxies where the multiple centres of this vast broadly spread city had formed.

But there were spaces between the spread of these lights. The blackness inbetween was the place where, what had once been, the sprawling cities and suburbs of San Francisco and Oakland and Paulo Alto. These had shrunk down to these gatherings of peoples in the semi-devastated remains of the post-World War Four world, now known as the WarFour.

Between these clusters of lights flew other lights, small and fast moving, the air-hazard lights on the occasional heli-car as they moved from one of these clusters to another.

Amongst these air-bourne craft was a police vehicle, its red and blue lights shone in a steady state on the vehicles roof and underside, indicating it was not on an emergency flight. It was occupied by Dave Holden and in the semi-darkness of mid afternoon, it was just after 4pm, he read by an in-cabin light. He was a bounty hunter, a Freelancer. That meant most of his work was done for the law enforcement agencies; the police, the courts - hence the taxi-ride in the police heli-car - but he also did some private-enterprise work. And that included android hunting. Androids would sometimes escape to Earth, moreso just lately. When they did so they were commonly known as replicants, human replicas. Android hunters were known as bladerunners. On this occasion he was working for the SF police. As he read the details in the incident report by the in-cabin light he wondered if there would come a day when THEY, the replicants, would be testing THEM, the humans. He shuddered. Moreso, since the human treatment of the replicants had been so - murderous, there was no other way of putting it - over the past quarter century with the advent of the Nexus generations.

Once, there had been no need for these bladerunners. Before the replicants, there were androids and they were simple enough. They always followed the orders of their human owners-masters. For the more squeamish owners, and there were many of them, they never referred to themselves as owners, let alone as masters, they thought of themselves as the sponser of these human replicas.

Dave Holden looked around, scanning the horizon. Off to his left he saw the fire plumes bursting and burning-off the excess gases from the San Francisco Aviation-Fuel Companies refinery. It was their twenty-fours a day work that kept him as one of the relatively few vehicles still in the air. But the company had revealed they were cutting back their work hours to only eighteen hours a day, four days of the week. The oil to refine was becoming ever scarcer.

Holden was travelling out to The Tyrell Corporations large pyramidial head office up in the hills around Paulo Alto for the same reason that he had been making this trip for the past two years so the view was anything but unfamiliar. He had spent a lot of time, lately, flying out to Paulo Alto a lot recently. He was making his way to Tyrell's again for the usual reason. Another employee was suspected of being a Nexus-Five infiltrator and Don Holder was to administer the Altered Scale Voight-Kampff Empathic Test.

His heli-car crested the black unpopulated blankness of the hill and immediately behind, in the valley, stood the large well-lit pyramidial head office of The Tyrell Corporations.

Chapter 2.

Part of the test protocol was to administer the test on a suspect subject as part of a group. The preferable number was a group of five or more but it was acceptable to use only three.

In this respect it worked a little like a police line-up for witnesses to identify a suspect, but that was where the similarity ended. The Voight-Kampff test was a complex and sophisticated method based on empathic response to identify the imposter in the group. Unlike a police line-up, it was a blind test, the police-tester didn't know who the suspect was, but had to identify it from their interpretation of the test results.

The test space had been set-up in a small corporate-grey cubicle in a room full of small corporate-grey cubicles that had been cleared to allow the process to take place away from the hub-bub of the usual working day.

Don Holden had already completed one test on a subject named Joe Handy. The testee left the cubicle that had been set aside for Don Holden to conduct the interviews. Holden completed a few last notes on the first testee on his pad and picked up his mug of, now tepid, synthetic-coffee and took a sip. He gave a bitter little grimace as he did so. He could still remember when coffee was the genuine article, not just a warm liquid with a coffee-flavour added. He completed his notes. He was content with his initial anylasis. The first of the group of testees was a 'blank', he was not the suspect. He checked the time and saw that it had taken less than fifteen minutes to ascertain this.

What little light there had been in the sky in mid-afternoon had faded to a feint glow off to the west, over the hillside. The remaining light illuminated the constant fine, low-level radioactive dust that hung in the air, regardless of the constant air-conditioning system.

This dust was always drifiting in the air outdoors. The only respite from the dust was when it rained. It rained alot more than it used to, pre-WarFour. And when it rained it rained much more heavily. The Earth's temperature had increased, that had reduced the ice floes by 25%, there was more moisture in the atmosphere, which would adhere to the masses of dust particles in the mid-layers of the atmosphere, which all caused - rain.

And the rain suppressed the dust, while bringing it down to ground level. But when the rain stopped and it dried, there were always islands of coagulated dust in the streets, lying like islands between dried up desert riverbeds. The constant rains aided the post-WarFour clean-up of the atmosphere. It also meant that there was a small added number of people that died of radiation poisoning each year.

Once the dust had fallen with the rain and dried up, when it dried up into these islands of dust, it was the city's responsibility to collect it, dump it in an insulated truck and take it to be dumped in deep pits that ringed the city several miles out.

Dave Holden stood up and took a few paces back and forth in the small space within the work cubicle. He took another sip from the mug. Then drank down the remains. He looked at the dark brown undissovled powery dregs at the bottom of the mug, swilled them around once, set the mug down on the desk. He sat down again and leant toward the I.C. console to ask for the next testee to be sent in.

The ceiling-fans spun slowly, moving the dust about, rather than clearing it.

The apparatus looked simple enough but it did what was required. It directed a broad cross-beam of lights into the suspects eye. It measured the response time of the reflexive movements in the eye muscles. Test subjects were given a series of hypothetical situations, and their reaction was represented on a series of gauges, a screen, and by a graphical representation. What was a reflexive action in humans was delayed, almost imperceptably, in the replicants. A designed-in feature to allow identification. He knew he was looking for a late generation Nexus. From this process it could be deduced, by an experienced tester, that the subject was a replicant. In this case he was looking for a Nexus-Five, in the form of a white male.

The next testee arrived at the cubicle. Don Holden stood up again and shook hands with the subject, he introduced himself and checked that he was speaking to Leon Polokov. Polokov pricked Holden's interest straighaway. He had a large build. Minaturisation had affected the build of the replicants, but not so much that they were actually minature. They were all slightly larger than average. Polokov was definitely larger than average. Holden hoped that the rest of the test group would be a bit larger than the first of this group. Just to make the testing process more interesting. Joe Handy had been slightly smaller than average and it was highly improbable that his body shape could contain the muscle pack required for off-world labour.

Polokov had opened the top half of the light disposable paper overalls that the clean-room researchers wore over their inner cover-alls. Holden sat and lit a cigarette and let the smoke flow slowly out of his lungs and he watched it as it rose in the air. Cigarettes were too much of a luxury to offer around to anyone but the closest, intimate friends.

'Please sit down, Mr Polokov,' he said gesturing at the high-backed chair with the Tyrell logo embossed in the plastic back. Polokov started to sit down in a chair next to him and Holden indicated that he had to sit on the opposite side of the table. Don Holden started to align the apparatus to Polokov's height, so that the light beam would shine directly into his eye on a horizontal course.

'I get kinda nervous when I have to take a test,' Polokov said as he shifted in the chair.

'Don't be. Just relax,' Holden said to reassure him. Most of the people in the test groups said something similiar, so he knew he was offering false assurance in some cases. He added, a little more sharply, 'And please don't move about.'

'I've already had an IQ test this year. When I joined Tyrell. I don't think that...'

Don Holden interrupted him, 'This isn't an IQ test Mr Polokov. Reaction time is a factor, so pay attention. Answer as quickly as you can.'

'Sure,' said Polokov.

Holden drew another lungful of smoke from his cigerette before he started the test, breathed it out of his lungs and watched the smoke spiral up to the ceiling. He glanced through the pre-set questions that were printed on individual cards, but started by checking Polokov's home address. Started with something simple to answer truthfully, as though it were an old-style lie detector test.

Polokov confirmed the address, then asked, 'Is that part of the test?'

'Just warming up,' said Holden.

'It's nothing fancy.'

'What?' asked Holden.

'My place. It ain't nothin' fancy or anything.' Holden looked across at Polokov, as though to judge whether it was worth saying anything in reply. He ignored it. Instead he started to put a scenario to him.

'You're in a desert. Walking along on the hot sand when...'

'Is this the test now?' asked Polokov. He spoke in a lazy drawl.

'Yes it is. So pay attention.' He repeated the introduction to the scenario, 'You're in the desert. When you look down and you see a...'

Polokov interrupted again, 'Which one?'

Holden stopped and looked at the test subject, 'What?' he asked.

'Which desert?'

'It doesn't matter which desert. It's completely hypothetical.'

'But how come I'd be there.'

'That doesn't matter either. You might be fed up. You might want to be by yourself. Who knows?' Holden said in an amiable manner. He continued, 'When you look down you see a tortoise.'

'A tortoise. What's that?'

'You don't know what a tortoise is?'

Polokov shook his head and shifted in the chair again.

'Please sit still,' said Holden. 'You do know what a turtle is?'

Polokov nodded his head.

'Same thing.'

'Then why is it called a tortoise, and not a turtle?'

Holden drew on his cigarette again and put it down so that it rested on the lip of an ashtray.

'Alright. They're not exactly the same, but they're very similiar. In the same way that trees have different names. There aren't many tortoises left now, anyway. OK?' He glanced across at Polokov. Polokov nodded. Holden noticed that his expression was sullen. He continued again with the test scenario, 'You reach down and you flip the tortoise onto its back.'

'Why would I do that?' Polokov asked.

'That is part of the point of the question...'

Polokov seemed to ignore the answer and asked another question of his own instead, 'Do you make up these questions yourself, Mr Holden? Or are they written out for you?' Holden ignored Polokov's interruption.

'The tortoise is lying on its back, Leon. It's belly is baking in the sun. It is beating its legs, trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not without your help.' Don Holden was giving a text book rendition of the question, keeping the sentences short. Terse. Adding a little inflection to his voice. 'But you're not helping.'

'What do you mean. I'm not helping?' Polokov said, agitation showing in his voice and face. He seemed to be rubbing the uppers of his thighs under the table, nervously. But Holden was watching the image of his eye, and the graphic read-out revealed a time-lapse in his empathic response. There was a time-lapse, but not as long as it ought to be for an replicant.

He pressed the point. 'You're not helping,' Holden repeated, 'Why is that?' The testing apparatus gave a steady beeping sound.

Polokov sat silently, he broke eye contact for a moment before looking back at Holden. Polokov wasn't relaxed in his posture. He seemed genuinely agitated at hearing the scenario. As though he were being accused.

Holden picked up his cigarette again and drew shortly on it and looked across the table at Polokov. He adopted a friendly manner, 'They're just questions Leon,' he paused, 'To answer your query. They're written for me. It's just a test. Designed to provoke an emotional response.' Holden gave a little nod toward the apparatus shining the light into his eye.

Polokov still looked ill at ease, he leaned forward in the chair.

'Shall we continue?' said Holden,

The test subject gave a very slight nod.

Don Holden shuffled the last question-card to the bottom of the pack and read of the next card. 'Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about ... your mother'

Polokov looked quizzical, 'My mother?'

'Yeah. Your mother. Tell me about her.'

'Let me tell you about my mother...' At that Polokov moved his arm swiftly and shot Holden from under the table.

Holden's swivel chair span round at the impact and he slumped against the back wall, Polokov stood up and fired three more times through the back of the chair. The impacts pushed Holden off the chair and he lay in an ungainly heap, seemingly lifeless, against the wall.

Leon pressed the gun back down into his waistband, pulled his paper overalls up to conceal it. He walked around to the side of the table where Don Holden was slumped against the wall.

'Did I pass the test?' Polokov asked sarcastically as he walked past his sprawled body and left the room at a fast walking pace.

Chapter 3.

A Personal View of Replicants, by an anonymous bladerunner.

In a little over twenty years the Tyrell Corporation had grown from a small start-up into one of the major players in replicant design and build. Before Tyrell there had been the first generation, pre-replicant, the Orb. Then the Orbit, mainly for use on orbiting stations. Then came the third generation, the Terra, mainly used to build and maintain the growth of what were known as hard-rock stations, those settlements on the meteors, the moon, and Mars.

True replicants came about with the following generation, the Vita. They hey moved beyond being humanoid and became very life-like, human life-like. This was taken further with the next generation, the Zeit.

Then came the Nexus generation, first developed by Eldon Tyrell when he was a young medical graduate. He used all the past research, his own training, and his own ingenuity to develop it. And the Nexus had wiped away what few remaining outward appearances of difference there were between the template for the replicant, people, and the replicants themselves. The International Robotics Commission had required that some fail-safe, some safety features were built in. From there, the Nexus became the standard that all the other producers had to aim to beat. In a short and sharp meteoric rise it had become the company it is now, The Tyrell Corporation. In the off-world business it was often known simply as The Corporation, with the capitalised 'c' of the word corporation - capitalised in the same way that God is capitalised.

Then something extraordinary happened. After four trouble-free Nexus generations there was a rebellion by a large group of Nexus-Five combat models in Terra Nuevo, twenty three people had been killed. That Nexus-Five group quickly dispersed. In so doing they spread the rebellion to other colonies, to ports and way-stations. During that first period of the rebellion it had turned vicious very suddenly. In addition to the first killings in Terra Nuevo there were another fifty-two dead on the other settlements on Mars. Among those working on the Moon, on the Amarcord project, there had been eigthteen dead. Nine killings had happened at the M2M (Moon-Mars) way-station.

Inevitably it had been dubbed the Sparticus rebellion. The result was to create the situation we are in now. The late-generation Nexus replicants were declared illegal on Earth, and all the off-Earth Nexus were to be taken into custody - what would ordinarily be termed a product recall notice. It was that product recall notice that had led to about three-quarters of the subsequent killings.

The declaration of illegality was imposed on-Earth even though, as some people pointed-out, there hadn't been any killings here. Replicants weren't needed. There was an excess of labour for the amount of work that was available to be done on Earth. For those dull and repetitive tasks that needed to be done the humanoids, and early androids were sufficient. Replicants added nothing. But for the off-worlders it was different. They really needed them. Whether they liked them or not.

That was just two years ago. And that was just the start of it. Since then there had been no small amount of carnage on a few of the off-world colonies, the bustling Hubs and the orbiting stations. The Nexus-Fives killed their owners and absconded. To broaden the problem and to add to their numbers, they had taken a few of the earlier Nexus generations, and pre-Nexus types, especially among the Vita and Zeit generations along with them.

Any of these replicants found on Earth could be killed, 'retired' was the expression that is used, on sight - but only once they had been identified as being replicants. But, that had been getting ever more difficult to do. Each following generation and version and upgrade of the Nexus - and the late-generatioon Zeits - had faded the line between the human and these non-human replicas. The obvious thing to do was to halt further development and releases. But this Pandora's Box hadn't been opened, it had been smashed underfoot. All the further development had already taken place before the rebellion happened. It was as though a moment had been reached, the critical mass, when the replicant's were outwardly indistinguishable from their original template - the human race. If it wasn't deliberate, it was a strange accident that made it look as though it were.

It wasn't only in their appearance that they had become more and more human-like. With the coming of the Nexus generation the similarities in the way their brain's worked made them an uncanny replica of how a person behaves. It altered how they appeared to, and mixed with, people. What it meant was that they could pass for human. And could be made to pass for human, by people with an interest in substituting people with replicant's. It was this that placed the Nexus even beyond the previous Zeit generations.

It has been both the apex of development, and one that that turned into a nadir.

The makers claim that the problems have been ironed out and are lobbying for production - that is, the breeding programmes - to be restarted. But I say, keep the ban. But that is only one small man's opinion in the face of a huge economic machine, and an off-Earth colonisation programme that, admittedly, needs some sort of artificial workers. Why do they have to be these replicant's though?

Off-world there were still a lot of people, those who elected to go out to establish new colonies in the outer-System and the new resource reclaimation centres, that preferred them. The old-hands had never been slain by any Nexus. They pointed out that the people that had been killed had all been new arrivals themselves, trying to establish themselves in an alien environment. They said the problem was behavioural. Among the humans, not the Nexus.

They might be right. The trouble is that there are too many people, when faced with the opportunity of treating the - as I've already said - very human-like replicant's as mere machines, did just that. They treated them just like a machine. The power that became available to them over a replicant appealed to the vain-glorious slave-master streak they had in them. As most, if not all, people have in them - while always denying it. I see this attitude everywhere. And that is with people and the simpler androids that we have here on Earth.

This is what the old-hands meant by saying the matter was a behavioural problem. Even though the replicants had clearly ceased to be machines since before the Zeit. The human behavioural problem was - they didn't want to engage in discussion and negotiation with, what they misunderstood to be, a machine. So they would shout at it - as though it were a machine. Give it a kick - as though it were a machine. Not just give it a kick, but kick it and kick it and kick it, and rage at it - as though it were a machine. And they never bothered to read the instruction manual - who does?

The old-hands knew better, they had seen all the growth and development - from the pre-replicant first generation, Orbs. These old hands - and not many of them are old, since many of them have been born off-world - didn't even call the rebellion the Sparticus rebellion. When they heard of a shooting they just said it was a case of 'going postal'. An old and odd expression, which no one seems to remember how and when it originated.

Not everyone though. The accelerating rate of the establishment of towns off-world meant that the new arrivals had recently started to outnumber the old-hands. In some of the towns, they were completely peopled by newcomers. Hence the declaration of illegality was greeted enthusiastically by some, and very reluctantly by others.

The trouble for the bladerunner's was, and for the Declaration of Illegality, is that the Nexus generation was fully adaptable. So any Nexus generation (whether they be service and maintenence, EVA, labouring, customer service, hospitality and home-helps, pleasure) made by any of the design-production conglomorates that were being produced for off-world work, could be redesignated to other roles. Some were known to have become members of inter-Hub shuttle flight-crews. Always between planets and moons and stations. In a constant stateless state. The existing crew's weren't concerned about the legality of an replicant being part of the crew. They were good workers as far as they were concerned, were always accurate in their work and didn't complain about doing an extra half-shift - or full tour. Only too happy to, was the catchphrase. It was better than anything they had been used to.

The critics of Tyrell and the other large corporations claimed the carnage was the result of a design fault. Tyrell Corporation and the business The Confederation of Roboticists on the other hand, claimed that a sophisicated act of industrial espionage had been commited. According to The Tyrell Corporation they themselves were the victims. It was their claim that a virus had been introduced into their growth cultures.

Because they were made to be as human-like as possible, they had ended up with some traits that had not been foreseen at the design and production stages, or were identified during testing. But it had quickly become apparent when they were released onto the market. What was it that was so unforeseen? What was it that had not been predicted? What were the so very human-like traits?

They wanted to be free. The one thing the replicants could not be. And they wanted to live.

The test conditions in which they were developed were not those of the slave-androids working conditions. They did all the hardest jobs that had to be done. Think of it like this. It was as though a person had been brought up as the favoured child. Then, without warning, they had been cast down to a position of hard-labour. It had been dubbed The Cinderella Complex. And because they were designed to be like humans, they did that thing that humans often do. They rebelled.

Nothing had been learnt from human history. It was like Sparticus had never lived. And the harsher the treatment, the harsher the reprisals.

Of those that did abscond, they often blended with ease with the human population, anywhere. A further inducement to abscond. It was the close attentions of us bladerunners that was the one major discouragement.

Most didn't come to Earth. Because, back here on Earth, it was - any excuse for a fight. It made a lot of sense not to come here. But they came anyway. Just as well for some of us, because that's where the real money was for us bounty hunters. There was a good supplementary living to be made from the bounty that was put on these arrivals on earth.

Of the later Nexus generations that did arrive on-Earth they always ended up making their way to Tyrell. One-by-one, or in groups. For Tyrell it had become a constant problem, to add the original troubles for them arising from the rebellion. Although most of their work was done off-Earth, they still needed intelligent employees on-Earth - they still had a restricted production licence of the previous Zeit generation. Their emplyees were being drawn from a diminishing on-world population that was deteriorating before their eyes - caused by the radioactive dust falling as hard-rain, as it was known. In the constant rain downpours of the post-WarFour world. Since replicants blended so successfully with the general population they could easily infiltrate the company during one of their recurrant recruitment drives.

What did they want? Maybe attempting to find a solution to their lifespan problem, hoping to live. While we bladerunners were hoping for them to die, at our hands.

Chapter 4.

The novelty arachnoid shaped advertising blimp drifted overhead, navigating its way through the high towers of the New San Francisco city centre that had been built to the south side of the old Candlestick Park. A pre-recorded voice boomed down on the crowded streets below. It cycled through its programme of adverts and advertorial.

First, it was Jimmy Bream's Synthetic Sour Mash Bourbon, complete with equally synthetic pictures of people in eighteenth century dress in the streets of the Old Quarter of New Orleans. Long since disappeared under water. Although the city of New San Francisco did have its own re-creation of, and recreational, version of Bourbon Street.

Next, was an a piece of advertorial for one of the specialist artificial animal and pet manufacturers, Mr Macawber's Menagerie. More smiling faces. Various children were being presented with kittens and puppies, lambs and ponies. And adults were thrilled to recieve a boa constricitor that immediately wound its way around its new owner, a parrot, and even an artificial owl. It ran for ten minutes.

By the time the blimp was over KoreaTown, it was broadcasting the off-world colonies information film, as though all the people who wanted to leave Earth hadn't already left for the planetary colonies - and most of the people still on Earth would never pass the test to leave now anyway. But still, it boomed out, regardless. A voice filled with bright optimism.

'Emmigrate to a bright new life on one of the off-world colonies. A chance to begin again. In a sun-drenched land of opportunity and adventure there is no better place than Mars-One. You, and a Tyrell Nexus. Or another one of your own choice. For an extra charge, perhaps try a bespoke option. A custom-tailored genetically-tailored humanoid replicant especially for your needs. So come on America...'

It was as if it was intended to taunt, and cause resentment, to the remaining Earth-bound population.

As it passed directly overhead Deckard looked up and saw, on each side of the blimp, two large screens showing smiling people in clean clothes in bright off-world colony streets. They were all upside down from where he was viewing them from. 'The world turned upside down', thought Deckard, that just about captures it.

Philip Deckard was in KoreaTown for lunch. Nothing fancy. KoreaTown was one of the various areas of San Francisco that had long since become a part of Asia. The city had been colonised by people from the Western Pacific. Japan, Korea and Vietnam had all come off especially badly in the war. Their major cities had been devastated. San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Anchorage and Vancouver had all become something like refugee camps since national borders had, after the last War, ceased being pourous and had largely dissolved. There was always talk of repatriation but nothing much had come of it.

It was raining. As it had been, constantly, for the past three days. People, mostly Koreans and Japanese - unlike most people Deckard could tell the difference from their appearance - moved about the neon razzled street as he awaited his food order from the pavement cafe over the road. The pedestrians walked along the sidewalk in left and right streams, many of them holding the neon-stalked umbrellas that were especially useful when you turned off the main thoroughfares into the underlit sidestreets. They glowed in cool-blues or pastel pinks. A couple of young woman dressed as geisha's held a rose-blossom coloured neon-umbrella's between them and half-talked, half-giggled to each other as they passed Deckard.

It was an old pre-Continental War area, with a lot of narrow streets crammed together. So this part of town was always busy. Deckard liked that. Too many parts of San Francisco were deserted, or seemed to be. It felt good to be in this crush of humanity.

He was one of the people who still read the hardcopy, the paper, version of the SF Chronicle, so he read his copy while he waited for his order. He leant against a brightly lit shopfront selling a mixture of the latest electronic goods imported from off-world but mainly it was the second-hand, third-hand, forth-hand and modified goods that were made on-Earth, local producers improvising low-cost alternatives from spares, refurbished and recovered components.

There was a news story about a shooting at The Tyrell Corporation that had caught Deckard's eye. He had noticed that there had been several shootings at their offices in the past year. He suspected that it was a replicant, but he wasn't looking to tangle with it since he had walked away from being a bladerunner ten months ago. He wasn't missing it.

Zui-Lee, ran the cafe on the opposite side of the street, he was an old, old Japanese man - who looked as old as time itself, - had been making up his order and he called over to Deckard, indicating that his order was ready. One useful function that newspapers served that gadgets didn't was they made good substitutes for an umbrella when they weren't being read. He closed the paper, put it over his head and dashed into the street. A car horn sounded and he looked round to see the crowd in the road parting quickly aa a car fashioned after an old 1960s Edsel model emerged quickly through the crowd. It just missed Deckard. 'Asshole,' he muttered under his breath.

At the cafe he had ordered dim sum, chilli noodle soup and a prawns (it was actually fish shavings and discards reconstitued and shaped into prawn shapes with an artificial prawn flavouring. Real prawns cost a small fortune, as most real things did). He picked a couple of chopsticks out of the dispenser and sat down. He crossed and recrossed the chopsicks, as two sword-fencers would do with their swords. Zui-Lee passed the bowl over to him and he quickly speared a dim sum and started to eat. Food was scant and scarce, and expensive. Everything was expensive. Except accomodation.

San Francisco, as many of the cities that had partially survived the War, was a place of both high-technology and decay. Despite all the high-technology, most gadgets and instruments and tools were left-overs from before the last war. Some were gaffa-jobs, creations made from yesterdays latest technology and were today's latest discards. Some people had the best gadgets from the off-world auto-manufacturies and made a point of being amongst the first that acquired them, but most people simply got by with what they could find.

Deckard ate. Swilling the noodles around the bowl and catching them in his chopsticks and shovelling them into his mouth, the chilli flavouring stung. He liked his chilli noodles hot, and these were hot. He smiled across at Zui-Lee, and with his mouth still full, murmured, 'Good, good,' and nodded again at Zui-Lee. Zui-Lee smiled his old, old smile back at him.

Deckard didn't eat his food as fast as possible, as so many people did nowadays. As though it might be stolen if he didn't eat faster - and that happened. People were mugged for food. Whatever is valuable is worth stealing. But Deckard had a kind of presence that many people wouldn't want to tangle with.

Although not old, his face showed, more than most, the years of harsh experience. Not just the post-War hardships. But his WarFour service, and also something of his police service. Before he had turned to freelancing serving outstanding warrents. With auto I.D., it was so much simpler as it had been. It didn't pay so well, but there was a much lower chance of being killed. He reckoned he had done his part in the hopeless task of stemming the flow of slayings and slaughter that people perpetrated on each other at any time. Especially in a time of constant hardship lived against a background of devastation and decay. For some, the knowledge, or just the suspicion, that among all this there were those who lived amongst them, the off-world rejectees mostly, who had nonetheless accumulated dizzying wealth caused them to reach for their gun and hunt them.

In truth, there was much more slaughter in San Francisco in a typical year than there had been in the three years of the 'Sparticus' rebellion. But people aren't replicants, and there is still some slim expectation of a fair trial. Human pride, desire, jealousy, greed, acquisitiveness, venality can't be eradicated by a simple Declaration of Illegality!

These wealthy people made their money, as of old. Hoping to bribe their way off Earth, or so Deckard presumed. He knew that every so often one of the big old houses in the hills would become vacant, so it must be working. It was these people that the banditti wanted to get at, but they employed small armies of personal security. The only way to get at them was to band together into ever larger bands of banditti, so you could at least match them in numbers. Once that happened the private security upped their fire-power in turn. San Francisco had its own localised arms-race going on and Deckard had been supposed to police it. Single-handedly, as it had sometimes seemed to him. Until he quit.

Even amongst the dizzying wealthy there were those who were among the many leftovers who hadn't passed the test to get to off-Earth. Everyone living off-Earth had to justify the oxygen supply they were using up. You had to justify the oxygen you breathed so the test was especially stringent. If you can't pass the test, you can't leave. Sometimes it was just easier to stay on-Earth. Of the entire re-burgeoning Earth based population - that was close to the pre-War global figure of eleven billion - there was only a little under half-a-million living off-Earth.

He heard the sound of a police heli-car above and behind him. He still had an instinct to check his scanner for information on their call-out but he ignored it. He opened up his newspaper and started reading it again as he speared a dim sum and continued eating. He had been eating and reading for a few minutes when he felt a tap on his shoulder and he glanced around at the unwelcome sight of a uniformed officer to his right.

'You're under arrest.'

Deckard ignored him and supped at his noodle bowl. Deckard felt a shove in his back.

'I said. You're under arrest.'

'I'm eating. Besides, I'm SFPD,' Deckard said.

'You used to be,' the uniform said.

At his left shoulder came another voice. This one spoke in a strange patois of broken, smashed-up langauges that some people had adopted, since so many people lived beyond their own borders.

'Monsieur, Herr Bryant wants vous. Come avec mois.'

He looked round and saw the pock-marked face of Gaff still with the pencil moustache that was current a few years back, a fashion retread from some old period. Deckard knew him by sight but didn't know much about him. He had arrived from LA just before Deckard had quit the SFPD. He was their best man but had been transferred to San Francisco since it became clear the Nexus that arrived on Earth were heading straight for The Corporation. Deckard looked down and saw that he was leaning on a cane with a silver-coloured dragonhead tip. He didn't have that six months ago, thought Deckard.

'Huh?'

'Lo-fa. Herr Bryant wants to see vous.' The tone was insistent.

'Yeah, Yeah.' Deckard said. 'Well. Since you're asking nicely.' He indicated over at Zui-Lee that he wanted a cardboard carton to put the remains of his meal into. The uniform got hold of his elbow.

'C'mon, lets move!' he said.

'I'm coming,' Deckard replied as he poured the contents of the bowl into the carton and tipped the uneaten prawn and dim sum into it as well. He stood up and looked at the uniform and at Gaff.

'So what is it that Bryant wants that you can't handle?' he said to Gaff.

Gaff held out his cane, as though he were showing off a new talent he had aquired. 'Shot in the line of duty. Now its your turn.'

'Oh. No, no.' Deckard said, 'I'm not coming back for anymore of that. That,' Deckard indicated Gaff's leg, 'is why I quit,' and he turned back to sit down.

'You quit Deckard. But you've still got eighteen months reserve service to do. You won't be going to the colonies now - until you complete your tour. You won't pass the test. Never.'

The uniform got hold of him but Deckard shrugged his grip off. 'I can walk. Unaided,' he said sardonically, glancing down at Gaff. Pointless arguing with these two, he thought. I'll hammer it out with Bryant. Since he is insisting on my company.

They walked away down the street.

'Where are you parked?'

'Up on the Sunrise Building.'

'Ah, right. I heard you flying in. Didn't take you too long to find me.'

'You're always as Zui-Lee's at this time. It wasn't difficult to find you,' Gaff said. Deckard shrugged, unslung the semi-rigid kit-bag off his shoulder and put the 'ToGo' carton, with his meal, into it.

'This is why I get indigestion,' he said as he licked the chopsticks and tucked them into his jacket's breast pocket.

'No. It's the hot-chilli and the sim-prawns that give you the indigestion,' Gaff said, 'Now, come along.'

They walked half a block to the Sunrise Building. It was an office block that had been built in the old town. It dated from about 2014 and had somehow survived two wars. It had been used for accomodation since WarFour. Back when it had been built it had the fastest express elevators, and unlike most pre-pre-war technology, they still worked as well as ever.

In a minute they were on the roof. The heli-car pilot opened the door for them as they approached and Gaff and Deckard climbed in. The pilot called-in to SF Air-Xchange that he was taking-off and informed them of his destination and course.

The counter-rotating double micro-rotors rose in pitch as they revved-up and the heli-car rose slightly and tilted forward and moved over the lip of the roof. Deckard re-experienced that sense of vertigo he always did when taking-off from a roof-top pad as he looked down the sheer twenty-five storeys to the street. He saw the advertorial-blimp rounding the building below them. He closed his eyes for a few moments until the pilot brought the nose up and they rose into the air-lane. He opened them again and noticed Gaff looking at him quizzically. SF-X chattered away in the cabin, instructing the pilot-driver, 'Climb, and maintain 2000. Join eastward traffic at Goof Tower.'

Deckard noticed that the red and blue emergency lights were rotating and casting their lurid-red and cool-blue light downward through the clear roof throughout the heli-car's cab.

'This is a taxi-ride surely? Not an emergency,' asked Deckard.

'You'll see,' said Gaff, and looked away over into the distance towards the old San Francisco city centre. The low light was dimly glinting on the water that had flooded the A-bomb crater that had hit the harbour and wreaked the Bay Bridge.

Deckard looked out the other window as the heli-car turned slowly in its rise from the roof in the direction of his old precinct building. The familiar face of the Japanese woman, made-up in the old-style geisha make-up, on the giant screen set on the Independence Insurance Building, was putting the supplementary nourishment pill in her mouth and smiling before sipping at a glass of milk and saki-substitute.

It was only a few minutes from the Sunrise Building to the precinct building but Deckard took out the meal-carton and started to eat his, now extra soggy rather than extra crisp, dim sum and noodles. But almost immediately after he swallowed the first mouthful he felt his stomach lurch. A secondary vertigo reaction. And anyway, he could see the part reconstructed stumps of the NineEleven Memorial Towers through the mid-day hazy gloom. Right round the west tower and it was a vertical descent onto the precinct roof. He put the carton away again. A perfectly disgusting dinner, utterly ruined, he thought.

The pilot called in to San Francisco Air-Xchange again for permission to approach for descent and received instant clearance while other craft rotated in the stack. It occurred to Deckard that this meeting could be important. The craft pitched forward into the descent and the pilot reliquished control as the 'auto' flew the last hundred feet down on to the low roof of the precinct building.

The precinct building was at the corner of Sunset Avenue and McKinley Lunar Boulevard. It was a partial shell used in one half as a stock exchange for skin, organ, hair and blood-bank trading (the SOHB X-change; hence the expression, "everyone has a SOHB story"). It seemed odd that a trade that could easily be conducted without face-to-face contact, a trade in something so bizarre and sometimes grotesque, had retained the outward appearence of the gregariousness of a trading floor. The other half of the building that fronted onto Sunset was the police precinct. Deckard emerged from the elevator into the large high-ceilinged booking-hall of the precinct. He walked quickly past the open plan grid of desks on the familiar route to where Bryant had his office. Gaff sauntered along behind him.

Bryant's office was in the corner and was an enclosed space made of oakwood and glass. Deckard didn't knock, he barged in through the office door and swung the door vigorously behind him so it slammed loudly, rattling the glass and the venetian blinds.

Bryant looked up and saw it was Deckard. He smiled.

'Come in,' he said, he waited a moment then added, 'and please close the door after you.'

Deckard's expression hardly changed but Bryant could see the small fleeting smile he gave through his scowl. They knew each other well, knew how to annoy each other and where to draw the line. Bryant knew that if there had been a World Series in barging and door slamming then Deckard would be an unbeaten champion. Besides his bladerunner record, door banging and scowling were amongst his other great talents.

Bryant was large and broad, which was not obvious when he was sat behind his desk. He wore a pale green shirt with what looked like a pattern of newspaper print all over it, and a plain brown tie. Everything old is always new, thought Deckard.

'If I'd asked you nicely, I knew you wouldn't have come.' Deckard didn't say anything. He maintained his scowl. Bryant gave a slight nod at the chair opposite him. 'Take a seat, pal.'

Deckard looked around the office, all the usual police-work clutter. A police radio quietly chattered and light flickered on Bryant's face from the monitor showing the real-time relays from the personal cam's of the officers out doing their rounds. For a moment he felt like he really missed it. Gaff came into the office. He and Bryant nodded to each other. He stood behind Deckard's shoulder, he removed his hat and stroked a forefinger over his pencil moustache.

Deckard glared over at his old boss.

'What am I doing here?'

'I've got four skins walking the streets,' said Bryant simply, as though that was all that had to be said.

'Your problem, Bryant. I repeat. Why am I here?' Bryant had been casual, friendly, in his greeting but he needed to get to the point. The smile on his face evaporated.

'Four skins on the street. That is a problem for everybody. And you,' he stabbed a finger at Deckard, 'are a bladerunner.'

'Ex-bladerunner. I'm retired.'

'There's no such thing,' Bryant said, 'Only replicants are retired, permanently. Now will you SIT DOWN.' Deckard relaxed and took the few steps over to the chair Bryant indicated and slumped down onto it. His former boss reached into his desk drawer and drew out a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses. He unscrewed the cap and placed the two glasses on the desk.

'Get this,' he said lifting the bottle, 'This is a genuine blend of synth and 20% real scotch. Don't say I don't spoil you when come a-visiting.'

Deckard snorted. Gaff walked behind Deckard, over to the couch set against the back wall. An electric fan whirred in the corner. Bryant, having got his compliance immediately launched into the guts of the incident.

'They jumped a shuttle Off-world. They killed the crew and passengers.' He poured a measure in each glass. 'They couldn't get a verbal call-sign from them beyond the auto-detect. The shuttle was found drifting in orbit two weeks ago, so we know they're around. They'd taken to a emergency pod, came down in that. It was found in the desert,' Bryant gave a discreet nod in the direction of the south-east. 'Who knows where they are?'

Deckard's expression had shifted from a scowl to neutral. Imagining possible scenarios. He reached forward and picked one of the glasses off the desk and said, 'Embarrassing - for you.'

'Not embarrassing because no one's ever going to know that they're here.' Bryant's tone hardened. 'Because you're gonna spot 'em and airbrush them out, like they were never here.'

'Back to square one,' said Deckard, 'I don't work here anymore. Give it to Holden.'

'I did.' Bryant said, he shifted the tone of voice back to the casual tone reserved for grim news, 'He can breathe OK. Just. So long as no one unplugs him. That's because of the big hole one of these skins made in his lung. Holden's good. But not as good as you. This is bad Deck's. The worst yet. Others have tried and been stopped. These one's made it. They got on to Earth. Not good enough.' He shifted his tone again somewhere between encouragement and ingratiating, 'I need you, Decks.

'I was quit when I came in,' said Deckard, 'I'm twice as quit now.' He set the whiskey glass back down on the desk top and got up out of the chair, 'Like I said, I don't work here anymore.' He turned towards the door.

Bryant's tone of voice hardened again, 'Wait a minute, pal. If you're not cop, you're little people.'

'I'm getting by,' Deckard said over his shoulder, as he rattled the door handle. 'And its easier on the nerves than any of this.'

'It can be made especially hard.'

Deckard stopped. He turned slowly round and faced Bryant again. 'No choice, huh?'

'No choice, pal.' Bryant confirmed. 'Let me show you something.' He tapped on his remote and turned a screen round toward Deckard.

The interview that Holden had conducted with Leon Polokov came on screen. It was a split-screen view. One part showed Polokov's retinal response, one showed the reading from the 'empathic response' graphic and another view was from Holden's personal cam' view, showing Polokov full face.

'We can miss the first half,' Bryant said as he sped it forward. 'It's the last part that's important.'

Deckard heard the voice of Holden giving a text book rendition of the questions, keeping the sentences short, terse and to the point. Then, adding a little inflection to his voice. He heard the reply, agitation showing in the subjects voice. The testing apparatus gave out a steady beeping sound.

'I'll move it forward a bit more,' Bryant said. He hit the button and let the recording speed by. He stopped it and ran it back. He started it running again. Dave Holden's disembodied voice was explaining something to the subject. '... They're written for me. It's just a test. Designed to provoke an emotional response.'

Deckard reflected on the V-K Test. A series of various, carefully constructed, sets of questions utilising a flexible modular system designed for the practiced interviewer to cross-refer - to get to a conclusion.

Bryant said, 'Now watch this. Here we are. We got the company's overhead security camera. Watch closely.' The recording showed the subject of the test move his arm swiftly and shoot Holden under the table. His swivel chair span round at the impact and he slumped against the back wall. The man stood up and moved to stand over Holden. He fired three more times. The impacts blasted Holden off the chair and he lay slumped, seemingly lifeless, against the wall. The subject pressed the gun back down into his waistband, and pulled his paper overalls up to conceal it.

'Did I pass your test?' he asked sardonically as he turned away and left the room at a fast walking pace.

As the archive ran on, it showed office workers come into the office sometime after the gunshots. The screen was now blank except for a view in the retinal response segment, which showed the back wall of the cubicle, the 'empathic response' graphic was a straight line since Polokov had ripped the electrode pads off, and the other segment, showing the view from Holden's personal button cam', which showed a piece of carpet and skirting board. After a few minutes it also showed the shoes of the office workers and then their faces briefly as they had turned Don Holden over onto his back and then back onto his side. There was nothing to see, only the sounds of their voices.

\- 'What happened?

\- 'It was Leon Polokov.'

\- 'Who's that?'

\- 'He's new here.'

\- 'How do you know it was him?'

\- 'He was called in, he'd only been in there a few minutes when there were shots. Then he came out. Not running, but moving fast'

\- '... routine testing ...'

\- 'Why'd he do it?'

\- 'Don't turn him on his back!'

\- 'I thought you were meant to.'

\- 'Never move a victim until the medic's arrive.'

\- 'But he's bleeding, we've got to do something to stop the bleeding.'

\- 'That's what lesion colagulent is for. There's some in that box over there. Go and get it...'

\- 'Stop crying and start helping!'

Then, eventually, voices were heard saying, 'How do you switch this off.' - 'Leave it. Its not important.' - then another voice said, 'I think its this, isn't it?'

The screen went blank and silent.

Bryant had leant across the desk toward Deckard and gave him more detail.

'Before this latest incident at Tyrell we know of those slaughtered on the shuttle. That's all. So far. There were originally six replicants that escaped, three male, three women. Holden's shooting might've been this group's first shooting here on-Earth. We just don't know. We're still trying to ascertain their movements since they arrived here. What we do know is that three nights ago they tried to break into Tyrell Corp.'

'Yeah,' said Deckard., 'I've been reading about it. They're like salmon going back to their spawning grounds!'

'Or homing pigeons. Something's drawing them back. I knew you're weren't really out of bladerunning, Decks. I shouldn't have had to twist your arm.'

'Reading about it isn't the same as wanting to do anything about it.' Deckard said, 'You ARE twisting my arm.'

'Someone had to. Back to business. Two of the replicants were fried running through an electrical security field. Older models, they weren't insulated against it. By the time we got there the others had disappeared. Tyrell have created these newer models, Nexus-Six's...'

'Huh? Nexus-Six's? I thought Tyrell were only allowed to produce their earlier models since the whole debacle with...'

'Exactly. But when have god-like Corporations the size of Tyrell been bound by mere human law? They're the ones that got away.'

Bryant shut off his monitor screen, now that the after-events of Holden's shooting had finished. He leaned closer toward Deckard, 'Anyway, on the possibility that they might infiltrate as employees I had Holden go over and run Voight-Kampff tests on all new workers. It looks like he got himself one. More correctly, it got him.'

'Or a very angry worker,' added Deckard.

'This one,' Bryant said indicating the now-blank screen, 'was Leon Polokov, an ammunition loader on Intergalactic runs...'

Deckard snorted and smiled, 'Intergalactic! They don't even get to the edge of the solar system...'

'Yeah. I know, that's marketing for you. A combat auxillery, obviously. This one can lift 400 pound loads all day and night. You can't hurt him. You have to kill him.'

'You can't hurt him? Not even if you comment on his terrible hair?' Deckard said sarcastically. Deckard took the remote out of Bryant's hand and ran the recording back. He freeze-framed the image of Leon Polokov, with his retinal image and 'empathic response' graphic, at the moment before shooting.

'Did Don get a reading on him? On its empathic response.'

'He didn't get that far,' said Bryant, 'as you saw. Or, at least, he is in no fit state to tell us, if he did. I'm not expecting him to remember anything about what happened.'

'I'd like to take the Voight-Kampff data so I can conduct my own analysis.'

'Sure you can. There's something else...' started Bryant. Deckard held up his hand to silence him.

'This is the information we got from off-World. They told us about the escapees, belatedly. If they had told us earlier perhaps the shootings could have been prevented. The replicants have either laid very low until this move on Tyrell Corp. Or they blended seamlessly, once they arrived.'

'Without analysing its empathic response my gut says this is human. A pissed-off worker.'

'But he'd only been there a few days. Fits perfectly with his recent arrival.'

'But Tyrell Corp is always hiring, the turnover is so high that they must take on new workers all the time.'

'Holden passed the first one he interviewed. Then came Polokov.'

Deckard looked up from the screen, a puzzled expression swept across his face for a moment. 'I've been reading about these shootings. Does anyone know why they're coming to Earth. That's unusual. For skins to do that. No one seems to be asking that question, because no one knows - other than the rumours - that replicants are here. Think of it from a replicants point-of-view. What has the dangers of coming to Earth and trying to get into The Tyrell Corporation got to offer, that a nice quiet life on a Jovian moon base couldn't beat?'

'I don't why, I just know that they've been doing it a lot. Every time some of them get to Earth. they head for Tyrell. Why they're doing it, is what you're here for.'

Deckard looked away from the screen momentarily, 'I'm here under duress. That's why I'm here. You said you have something else to tell me.'

'That's right. Tyrell Corp have been unusually helpful. Let me show you this.' Bryant started to move his hands around on the screen, 'This is what we have on the others. Take a good look at these.'

A head appeared on-screen and rotated around 360 degrees on the vertical axis. It was a large head without hair, with a broad forehead, dark brown eyes and strong jawline. There was a black block over the bottom of the screen.

'What's this?' Deckard asked.

'I'm going to show you the templates of each of the other escapees. Tyrell have given us these. They're redacted, hence the great block of black at the bottom of the screen. This is the first.'

'What we have got out of Tyrell are these images of the templates. This is the appearance of the base models as they come off the line, or whatever it is Tyrell do. This is the foundation upon which all the varients will be based.'

'So they're not producing them at the moment?'

'Not so far. So they say. They say that the escapee's are pre-production test models.'

'Oh yeah? 'If _these_ weren't supposed to be produced. How many others were produced too? None were supposed to be being made.' Deckard stopped and asked, referring to the spinning head on the screen, 'And the Corporation that never does more than the bare minimum when dealing with any of the authorities freely furnished you with these images?' Deckard asked.

'That's right. Eldon Tyrell himself.'

'Eldon Tyrell!' Deckard exclaimed and gave a little whistle under his breath. 'God Almighty. In person?'

'Not in person. No one knows if he really exists,' Bryant said sardinically, 'A conference call was set-up, from above. We did speak, briefly, on the VOICe system. Then he passed me onto his assistant. It was all on his direct authority.'

'And yet they're usually so reluctant to offer any information if they can help it.'

Bryant nodded at the head spinning around on the screen, 'This model here is a sub-model N6MAA1081-2056. Made for combat. Optimum self-sufficiency... '

'Made for combat? They're not supposed to be...'

'That's the way it is, Deck,' Bryant shot him a resigned expression, 'when you're bigger than god, this is what you do. We have been told that this one has been assigned the I.D. of Roy Batty. Blond hair, blue eyes...'

'This has grey eyes.'

'It's the foundation of the Type. They don't look very different to the Zeit or earlier Nexus generations on-screen. But we're told that the difference is obvious up-close. The differences are not just in the appearance but in the touch, and how they interact. I'll come back to that. But this one here, we've been told it is blue-eyed, but he could have a Fu Manchu moustache for all I know.'

'Not much help. He could wear contacts or retinal inplants in any colour or pattern,' observed Deckard.

'Unlike Polokov, this one has a distinctive appearance.'

'You wouldn't miss this one in a crowd. Do you have a chassis image?'

'They didn't let us have that. They did say that the bodywork can be anywhere between 6 feet and 6 feet 6 inches. Body shape and build is from type B3 to A1. This one is probably the leader,' Bryant said and gave a half smile.

'That figures,' said Deckard.

'Now for the others,' Bryant said as he moved his finger across the screen. Another head appeared and started to spin on the screen. 'Another Nexus-Six, obviously. This is sub-model N6FAB61216. Issued with an I.D. as Zhora. Female. Though its difficult to tell with these facial features. Possibly this one is used with either male or female chassis. Used in an Off-world kick-kill squad. Nothing to look at here. But I've seen an image of the sub-model's though. As maninish as this template looks, with the right hair and make-up done in various ways it's obviously intended to be seductive. You've heard of beauty and the beast. She's both.'

Deckard leaned back from looking at the screen and said, 'Next.' Bryant slid a finger across the screen. Another spinning, floating head came on. This one, in its base template mode was much more feminine in its appearance. High, defined cheekbones, lean jawline and chin, full lips and wide mouth.

'These are all the new Nexus-Six's. This one is sub-model N6FAB61416c. The basic Pleasure type. Believe it or not this a male/female as well, depending on secondary characteristics that are added. Used on military or civilian flights on the long duration journeys, and in the outer-System'. Deckard leaned in again, to look closely.

'I'd like a screenshot of each of these anyway. Side and front, in the old-style way, and three-quarters from back and front. I'll need to show them around. The usual old-style way.'

'Sure. I'll get them to you,' Bryant said. 'There's something you need to know about these Nexus. They're designed to copy human beings in every way. It aids the empathic acceptance by the human...'

'Easier to get close to, and kill them?' interrupted Deckard.

'Maybe,' Bryant said. 'This is Tyrell Corp's big idea. These copy humans in everything except emotions. They're designed to learn from interaction, just as a child learns. The designer's reckon that after a few years they might develop their own emotional responses. Fear, hate, envy, anger, jealousy. Even love. Given enough time. The IRC required them to build-in a fail-safe device.'

'Which is?'

' A four year life-span.'

'Four years,' Deckard repeated.

'Uh-huh,' Bryant confirmed.

'Little wonder they're pissed off,' Deckard said. 'How will Voight-Kampff work on a model that learns emotions. If I can't administer the test, why am I here?' Deckard spread his arms wide, indicating the precinct building.

'This a hunt-and-kill mission.'

'But I need to know its a replicant, not a human lookalike.'

'Honest, simple police work. That will be the test you'll be administering. The old way. If you can't be sure of your ID, don't shoot!'

'Hunt-and-kill AND don't shhot. Any other helpful advice?'

Bryant gave a half smile. 'That's about it, Decks.'

A heli-craft's headlights, flying low - too low - shone its bright beams of light through the window of Bryant's office, as it rounded a corner. Bryant squinted and shielded his eyes. 'Seems odd, don't it?' he said. 'I've been told that they're designed that way, a fail-safe, so that they don't develop real emotional responses. So they will still be detectable to the test. Those Tyrell people are real helpful like that. Always thinking of us at the SFPD, and you bladerunner's especially.' Bryant raised an eyebrow as Deckard looked at him, 'I'm sceptical though.'

'If they're so new, where am I going to get to test subject , to calibrate the test?' Deckard asked. Bryant looked down momentarily and looked at Deckard again. 'They have a Nexus-Six over at The Tyrell Corpration. I want you to get a Voight-Kampff reading on it. If its possible.'

'And if the test doesn't work?'

Bryant didn't answer. Deckard noted Bryant's non-response and answered his own question. If the test doesn't work, then we will all have a big problem.

Chapter 5.

The offices of The Tyrell Corporation were in the form of a series of pyramids in the hills around Palo Alto, based on the Great Pyramids at Giza - but built on an even larger scale. In steel and glass, with the frame on the outside. Despite the wars they were still standing. So far. Just as they had been the last time Deckard had to come here.

But heli-craft had to land somewhere so the apex of the main pyramid - Building No 1 - had a broad flat area with a pad. This is where Doctor Eldon Tyrell, he was both a medical doctor and a doctor of philosophy, had his design studio and his home. When Deckard arrived he was escorted to Tyrell's office.

Doctor Eldon Tyrell was, reputedly, a hermit-like ascetic. But since he had so little contact with the outside world - a world that often clamoured to know more about him - it was difficult to know. Since he had made his home atop The Tyrell Corporation's offices it had seemingly become his entire world. As far as was known he had not left the premises of the headquarters building for a decade. All his contact with the outside world was through a small number of trusted intermediaries that acted on his behalf.

If another rumour was true, that he had had extensive aesthetic surgery, then he must have left the premises at some time for those proceedures. And if that rumour was true then he might not be remotely recognisable, now, from the last known photographs of him.

The meeting had been hastily arranged by Bryant, and Deckard had arrived an hour after his meeting at the precinct. The assistant who escorted him advised him that Doctor Tyrell would be along at the pre-arranged time and left him there. Although Deckard had visited the building many times before he had never seen this part of the building. He supposed that few people had. The Inner Sanctum, he thought.

From the elevator door there was a large open, empty space. It had half a dozen Egyptian columns extending to the far wall - in keeping with the pyramidial design of the exteriors. They were not load bearing, as they clearly did not extend to the roof. The entire space had a highly polished floor that reflected what little light that remained in the late afternoon. Through a huge sheet of glass at the far end of the room, westward-facing, the sun, although dimmed, was also magnified by the dust-chocked atmosphere and shone directly into the building at this time of the day. The entire space was infused with a yellow-bronze light. It was so unlike the quality of light he had just flown through. He assumed they must have a colour filter set in the huge sheet of glass. He walked across from the elevator to look at the view from the window, to where the only large of piece of furniture was. His footsteps echoed off the hard floor and wall surfaces. As he walked he looked at the columns. He diverted his walk over to the left and ran his hand over the surface of the column, felt its coolness and then tapped his knuckles against it to sense its solidity. Not fake. Very real, or, if not real, then a very convincing re-creation. Each of the pillar's were worn.

His attention was taken by the broad vista over the hills around Paolo Alto, and over the crest of the hill to the lights of San Francisco. As he waited he was aware of a sound, the sound of some kind of fluttering off to his right. He looked to see what it was and was met with the eerie sight of a large bird sitting on its pearch. As it moved it's head, the way that the low oblique light met the owl's retina made them shine in a perculiar - eerie - manner. He looked at it, quite astonished. So rare had avian life become.

As he looked at the creature it took flight, flying close to his head, as it flew over to the perch on the far side of the large room. Little sooner after it had spread its wings, it was on the other perch and was ruffling and tucking its feathers.

A woman's voice suddenly echoed through the space, as though from nowhere. 'Do you like our owl?' the voice asked.

Deckard turned and looked around to see where the voice had come from. He noticed an oval of light some distance away back by the elevator. Against the shine of light off the black lacquered surface of the doors stood a young woman dressed in a black dress suit that also shone in the light, with a skirt to the ankles. Almost camoflaged against the background, thought Deckard. Almost. She wore a red rosebud in her jacket lapel. The elevator was so quiet that he hadn't heard it descend to this floor. She ruined the camoflage effect by starting to walk toward him, the yellow-bronze light shining off her skirt and jacket as she moved.

'An owl? Is that what it is. I wasn't sure,' Deckard said as she approached him.

'What did you think it was?' she asked.

'I really wasn't sure. I've seen old footage of eagles. I thought that it might have been that. Is it real?'

'Of course not.'

'Still. It must be expensive.'

'Very,' she said flatly. She faced him now. She was fine featured, very light skinned with a small mouth, a straight nose and large, almost vast, dark eyes. She was young, but Deckard couldn't fix her age as she wore a lot of make-up. Blusher, mascara, eye shadow and a rich glossy red lipstick. She had a mass of raven hair piled in a rigid fashion upon her head. He knew that the clothes and the hair and the make-up was all in a certain style but he couldn't remember it. It was an impressive effect, though.

'I'm Rachael. I am Doctor Tyrell's personal assistant. You are Mr Deckard?' Deckard nodded. There was a depth to her voice, a smokiness, almost huskiness, that belied the youth of her appearance. She held out a small pale delicately boned hand to him. They shook. His hand appeared huge and roughly hewn by comparison to hers.

As Deckard had turned toward the voice he noticed there were two large eagle sculptures in the far corners of the back wall. They were so distant from the elevator doors he emerged from that he hadn't noticed them as he was shown in. He also noticed that the plinths were pock-marked and had gougings out of the stone. They had clearly been deliberately defaced. He realised that they were Third Reich eagles. Probably recovered from some Nazi minister's office. The pock-marks looked like they might have been bullet holes or shrapnel scars, the gouging was where the swatika's had once been, circled by laurel. What does that say about Tyrell? Does it say anything, other than that he collects broadly?

'You work directly for Mr Tyrell, or do you work for the Corporation?' Deckard asked.

'Directly for DOCTOR Tyrell,' she said. Hence the clothes, thought Deckard, the work-wear of the super-rich. She turned away from him and walked a few paces away. She turned again to face him and added, 'It seems that your Department feels that our work is not to the benefit of the public.' She had deliberately come straight to the point.

Deckard thought it better to appear neutral, he didn't want to be drawn on the subject. 'Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard. Sometimes both. Heli-cars crash. Inter-planetary shuttles fail and drift, and everyone on board can expire before the rescue craft arrives. Sometimes they blow-up. They're both a benefit and a hazard - at the same time. Replicants are no different. When they're a benefit, it's not my problem. But if they were always a benefit, I wouldn't be here, now.'

Rachael gave a discreet nod of the head. 'May I ask you a personal question?' she asked.

'Sure.'

'Have you ever retired a human? By mistake, I mean.'

'No!'

'Or deliberately.'

'Certainly not,' he said emphatically.

'How can you be so sure? Afterall, in your line of work that would be a risk.'

'That is why we administer the Voight-Kampf Test. Benefits and hazards Ms...?'

He halted. She answered, 'Ms Tyrell.'

'You are part of the family?'

'Yes. But it isn't nepotism. Before you start thinking that.' She immediately seemed to have a need to justify herself, and seemed less assured in her manner. 'I do have an aptitude, unlike some second and third generations of a family business...'

Deckard accepted her wish to explain her presence and returned to what he was saying, 'No replicant is retired without the V-K Test being applied, or without the prior authority of the appropriate...'

'Mr Deckard, I know of many instances when a replicant has been...'

Deckard didn't wait for her to finish the sentence. 'Ms Tyrell. That is what you may believe has happened, but that would only occur if it were a fugitive.' He had been in too many pointless discussions with roboticists and other enthusiasts on this point before now. He continued, 'Only after they have failed the Test, or are endangering human life.'

'But a replicant is still a life. It is alive.'

Deckard certainly didn't think so, but he wasn't going to be drawn on it now. 'Not under any law recognised amongst national governments on-Earth for, what ought to be, an obvious reason. Given the recent carnage.'

He reckoned that would put her on the backfoot, but she continued, 'Except in Idaho or Iowa, or British Columbia. And a few other terrotories,' Rachael Tyrell replied.

'In that case, take it up with the legislature. When they figure that the benefits outweigh the hazards, on-Earth, they can put me out of business. I've already left the business twice before.'

'And yet you keep coming back to it.'

'Staff shortages,' he snapped back at her, 'Police keep getting shot. By your replicants,' he said, not trying too hard to keep the accusatory tone from his voice. Deckard paused then. He was allowing himself to be drawn into an argument with an unpersuadable advocate of the benefits of replicants. He said simply. 'I have my Department identification, my Bladerunner license, and my Test certification. If you feel the need to check it.'

'That won't be necessary.' A disembodied voice echoed loudly towards them. Deckard looked around and saw Doctor Tyrell walking quietly towards them in soft soled shoes. 'Rachael,' he called out, holding a finger vertically across his lips, indicating "Be quiet!" As he approached he said, 'I believe you may be goading our visitor. I know Mr Deckard. We have met before.'

They had met before but Deckard was astonished that Tyrell had remembered. It was over a decade ago, before the man had become the reclusive enigma he had laterly elected to be, and on that occasion it had been only briefly. Tyrell appeared to Deckard, on this occasion to be slightly younger than he had appeared then, so far as he could remember. He was lean, dark-haired, but clearly not young. Otherwise he was of indeterminate age. His hair was a lot thicker than it had been before. He wore large glasses with light-shields at the sides. On his glasses scrolled news, data, information - in reverse - from Deckard's point-of-view. He was dressed in a deep blue rough-silk dinner-suit, as though ready to go out for the evening.

'But anything could have happened since you last...' Rachael started to say. Tyrell stepped up to her and stood by his assistant, placing a proprietal arm around her waist and quickly kissing her cheek. Deckard quietly noted this.

'No. No. It is alright,' Tyrell said as though he were soothing a child. 'Where would we be in the world without some trust? Things would be much worse than they already are.'

He faced Deckard.

'Thank you for allowing this meeting,' Deckard said. Tyrell gave a dismissive wave of his hand. It was something that was entirely in his gift. He could have refused to have anything to do with the investigation. Unless he was sub-poenaed. 'I am of the Free-Life school-of-thought. But I can see occasions when giving some aid to the police, the state, is of some common value.'

'For whom?' Deckard asked. Tyrell ignored the question. 'This is to be an empathy test?' Doctor Tyrell asked. 'Voight-Kampf? Or do you use one of the other ones? There are others still in use.'

'Voight-Kampf,' confirmed Deckard, 'V-K, for short.'

'Ah. Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Flucuation of the pupil?' He glanced at Rachael. 'Involuntary dilation of the iris.' He added, 'Demonstrate it. I'm always fascinated to see it work. To see it being applied.'

'I was told there would be a subject here. Where's the subject?' Deckard asked.

'Show me it work on a person. I've never seen _you_ apply the Test. That is the qualification I want to see. Not the departmental I.D. and Test Certification. Prove to me that you are qualified, through a demonstration of your skill. By showing, not telling. I want to see a negative - before I provide a positive.'

'Mr Tyrell...'

'Doctor Tyrell,' he said curtly.

'Doctor. That is why we are Certificated, so we don't have to constantly demonstrate to confirmed sceptics the effectiveness and accuracy of the Test.'

Tyrell adopted a superior attitude. 'Indulge me,' he said.

'I could conduct the Test on you Doctor,' Deckard made sure to emphasise the word Doctor, with a little sarcastic twist in his tone.

'No,' Tyrell replied, he took one step back from his assistant, 'On Rachael.'

Deckard looked at Tyrell's assistant, her eyes were cast downward. He suddenly noticed that she had looked at the floor a lot in the short time they had been talking. There was something obscurely appealing to him about it. He looked at the low-lying setting sun and squinted into the light.

'It's too bright in here. It's easier in a darker room. Or in neutral light.'

'That's alright,' Tyrell said. He moved around to the end of the large table by the window and cast his hands across a screen, it looked like he was performing a holy rite as his hands moved in the vertical-horizontal pattern of the Holy Cross. The yellow-bronze coloured filtering in the glass changed to a smokey blue-grey.

'Is that better for you?' he asked Deckard.

'Much better.' He indicated to Rachael to take a seat on the opposite side of the table as he set up the Voight-Kampf Test apparatus. He glanced up and noticed another detail about the room. There was a sculpted bust off to the right of the long table. It had been in silhouette when the sunset light had been streaming into the room. It was of Emperor Julius Ceaser.

Deckard started recording, and made a bald statement, 'This is a Voight-Kampf Empathic Response Test, Altered Scale. Subject, Rachael Tyrell. Then he addressed Rachael directly, just as he had done to several hundred Test subjects before, but as though he had never said these words to anyone else. It was part of Deckard's technique. Like a medical doctor's 'bedside manner', it was practiced but, seemingly, unique to that one person.

'Please make yourself comfortable. But the proceedure shouldn't take too long.' He caught, out of a corner of his eye, what he took to be, a condesceding smile flit across Doctor Tyrell's face as he checked his set-up.

'Now, I'm going to put a series of scenarios to you, and will ask you some questions. Just relax and respond to them as simply as you can. Time is a factor. Answer as quickly as possible, but it isn't a competition. There aren't any points for answering the questions quicker than anyone else has. It is not a quiz either. There are no 'right' answers. Answer them as you feel.'

Doctor Tyrell coughed and interrupted, 'Is that true, Mr Deckard?' Deckard looked over at him as he stood at the end of the table. Tyrell was holding up his forefinger as if to make a point. 'Surely wrong answers lead to indentification of the subject as a replicant, as you call them.'

'Still. It isn't a quiz. It is more about the speed of response than the content of the answer. Just as a low empathic response does not mean a subject is not a human.'

Deckard adjusted the iris dilation sensor and checked it on his screen. He noticed that Rachael's eyes were not the deep dark brown they seemed to be. He saw now that they were slightly lighter and flecked by a grey-green colour. Somewhere, in her left eye there seemed to be a low red glow. A reflection off the rose bud in her lapel, perhaps?

He started administering the test.

'It is your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet and...'

Rachael didn't wait for the end of the sentence as she said, 'I wouldn't accept it. I'd also report the person who gave it to me to the police.'

Deckard watched the long tail of the graphic representation of her response scroll across the screen. He digested the data, assessed what it showed him. The first question wasn't going to reveal too much. He added a mark to the response graphic and it scrolled off to the left of the screen. He moved onto the next question.

'You're reading a magazine when you come across a nude photo of a woman model.'

'Is this a test to see if I am a replicant or a lesbian, Mr Deckard.'

Deckard looked up from the screen. One of her eyebrows was raised quizzically at him, 'Just answer the question please,' he said in his business voice. He paused, 'We'll let that one pass...' as he made a scoring-out mark through the response graphic. Rachael looked off to one side, at Doctor Tyrell. He continued, 'You show it to your husband. He likes it so much he wants to hang it on the bedroom wall. What would you do?'

'I wouldn't let him.'

'Why not?'

'I should be enough for him.'

'Racheal has a point,' said Tyrell.

Deckard was curt in his response. Without looking at Tyrell, keeping his eyes fixed between the apparatus and the response graphic, he held up the flat of his palm toward him and said, 'No more interruptions. Please.'

Deckard continued the Test for the next forty minutes putting all the scenarios and questions that had been formulated by psychologists to identify low empathic response. Until he came to the last scenario on his list.

'You attend a banquet. The entree is served, you find that it is boiled dog.'

No response. Rachael looked down. She looked nervous. She pursed her mouth and quickly licked her lips, she looked as though she was about to speak but then said nothing. She looked up at Deckard again and back down at the table top. She was fidgeting her fingers and thumbs.

Deckard sat back in the chair. Rachael looked him straight in the eyes for a long moment.

'Step outside for a few moments, please, Rachael,' Doctor Tyrell said to her. She rose from her chair, straightened her jacket, tucked her right hand into the jacket pocket, a strange little habit she seemed to have, and walked across to a door set discreetly into the wall off to the left of the large room. As she did so Deckard and Tyrell eyed each other. Deckard looked behind at the door, to make sure she had left the room.

Deckard spoke first. 'She's a replicant.'

'You're very definite in your assessment.' Tyrell cleared his throat, 'I like to get an understanding for a man's skill at his task. That is why I wanted to see you apply the Test. Much better than looking at a Certificate,' Tyrell said, 'I'm impressed.'

'I had to do the test anyway, but usually I expect my Certificate to be proof of competency. Of skill.' Deckard looked steadily across at Eldon Tyrell. 'You expected me to pass this one, didn't you? Since you wanted to see a negative before a positive.'

'Hmmm,' was all Tyrell said in reply. He was clearly in deep thought. He gestured at Deckard's apparatus and asked, 'How many questions does it usually take to identify a...,' he hesitated, 'a, replicant?'

'Twenty. Maybe thirty. Cross-referenced.'

'You cross-reference them as you go along?'

'That's right.'

'Yet it took over a hundred for Rachael...' There was a tone of suppressed triumph in his voice. Of, almost, beating the system - of an instant assessment of what had to be done to beat the test. Deckard sensed it and interrupted him. 'She doesn't know. Does she?' he said.

'I think she is beginniing to suspect.' Tyrell said. He switched the subject back to the test. 'Why, do you suppose, it took _so_ many questions to identify this one?' asked Tyrell.

'I knew by the time I got into the eighties. I went through the rest as a fail-safe.'

'Still,' Tyrell said, 'that is a lot more than twenty or thirty.' There was that note of triumph in his voice again.

'How can it not know what it is?'

'Why should it? Is she not a beautiful creation? And besides does knowing what we are help us much at all, Mr Deckard? That we are all just reserviors of sperm and banks of eggs. That must wait to mate. Wait for puberty. And everything else is just a light-show, to keep us entertained, distracted. How does that knowledge help you? Within Rachael, there could be a new level of consciousness. The apex of the Nexus series. The foundation of the Zigot generation.'

'But all the previous generations at least knew they were replicants. Or more correctly, they had no knowledge of themselves. They were just machines when all-is-said-and-done. The appearance of being human was just that. Only an appearance. Not real.' Deckard shifted in his chair, subconsciously thinking of the implications. 'What is the point, anyway of this...' he hesitated for a moment, lost for words. He found the one he wanted. 'This subterfuge.'

'The point, Mr Deckard, is commerce. Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. Our commercial policy is - what is good for trade, is good for Tyrell. And replicants, as you bladerunner's insist on calling them, are good for trade. 'More Human Than Human' is our motto. Why? Because the alternative is worse. Would you prefer a return to slavery, Mr Deckard? Is that what you would advocate? Would you be sending people to the outer System against their will, to work and work without rest? That is what the replicant's do for us. Even if our idiot lawmakers imagine otherwise. Make merry, Mr Deckard.' He paused, then said, 'but that will change.'

'Replicants - I loathe that expression -,' Tyrell gave an exagerrated shudder, 'are needed on the strip-mines and the outer colonies because the conditions are too harsh for our fragile human sensibilites. 'A tour on the Moon is fine for most people. An off-Earth platform is fine too. They're just a hop and a skip across a narrow stream. But the outer System? There are not nearly enough people who want to go out there. Yet we want the resources. The metals, the rare earths.

'Understand this Mr Deckard, Rachael is an experiment. For a prototype. For a production model.'

Deckard was astonished at what Tyrell had achieved. She had, indeed, been 'More Human Than Human'. But something else too, she appeared desirable. Tyrell continued, 'Like all the others that went before her and will come after her. All the - yes - 'product', that has made Tyrell the huge exo-Earth business it has become.' He continued, 'The legislators may be able to sit aside from the effects of their policy, but they are hurting the population of Earth...' He stopped. 'But enough of that.' He came forward a few steps to where Deckard was sitting. His tone suddenly switched from a laconic semi-drawl. He began to talk with some enthusiasm, as though he were consulting his own imagination, out-loud, in front of an outsider, a spectator.

'But with the earliest creations we came to recognise a strange obsession in them. Afterall, they are emotionally inexperienced and have only a few years to store-up the experiences that we take for granted. It manifested itself in an obsession with their origins. Little different, superficially I suppose, from a child of about six or seven years asking about where they come from. It was a problem and needed a solution. And solutions are what we do well. So we tried another experiment. We gifted them a past. For them it provides a comfortable cushion for their developing emotions that we humans usually get from our past. That we get from family, friends, food, wine, shopping, the temporary oblivion of Trizac, what we get from this good Earth. With this cushion we found that we could control them better.'

Tyrell looked straight into Deckard's eyes with a penetrating gaze. It felt as though he was looking deep into the core of Deckard's 'soul', then he added, 'Or that a bladerunner might get from the thrill of retiring recalitrant, recidivist, replicants.'

Deckard smirked humourlessly. Then it occurred to him what Tyrell was driving at.

'Memories,' he said, 'You're talking about giving them memories.'

'Correct, Mr Deckard. A beautiful and simple solution. Doubly beautiful for its simplicity. I don't go to the opera. I have a few beautiful objects here, as you may have noticed, but I don't care much for the Arts. Why is that? Because designing, what you call, replicants, is all the beauty I need. My immersion in designing gifts me, in turn, with ideas, solutions. It made our failing experiment into ...Rachael.' Tyrell paused for dramatic effect, '...and beauty was created.'

Chapter 6.

After Deckard left the Tyrell building he called into the precinct from his heli-craft as he flew back to San Francisco and advised Bryant that he was following up the lead on Polokov. The address of the hotel he was living at that had been given in the interview with Don Holden. By the time he got there the heavy night-rains had started to fall.

All the moisture evaporating off the Pacific ocean coalesced on the dust that had been thrown up into the atmosphere during the last war and caused weather patterns to change and San Francisco got a lot of rain, every night.

11-87 Hunterwasser Hotel Apartments. It was an old building, built before the last two wars, on the corner of Lincoln and Lafeyette, off Independence. There were much better buildings in much better parts of the old city. This part of the city was underpopulated and underlit. In a city crowded with refugees, or, because it was a city crowded with refugees, this was still the lousy end of town. When you lived here you were either starting from the bottom, stuck at the bottom - or you were on the skids. The kind of long skid that ended here.

Deckard touched down on the pad of the heli-station built over the Yukon building next-door and taxied the craft over to a corner parking bay. Gaff was waiting for him on the pad. He lifted the cane that he always leant on up to the brim of his hat as Deckard came in to land, by way of saying hello. Gaff always kept his use of words to the minimum, as though there was a shortage of words and he had to preserve the few that he had and make them go as far as possible. Deckard didn't mind. He never liked the patois-crap that Gaff used when he talked, anyway. They walked swiftly off the pad to get out of the rain and down to get an entry key to Polokov's hotel apartment from the buildings night-supervisor.

Calling these places hotel apartment's was a grand name for, a room. They had been apartments at one time but the pre-war shortage of accomodation meant they had been partitioned into single rooms. They entered the room. Polokov's place was on the eleventh floor, the top floor, but this was no penthouse.

They entered the room. Gaff went into the main room. Deckard checked the bathroom inside the door on the left. He took out his torch and kept the bathroom light off. He shone the torch around the room, switching back and forth from white light to ultra-violet, just in case something unusual might show up. Something unusual did. As he looked into the shower cubicle he saw something glinting in the light, caught in the plughole. He bent down and looked closer, then he took out a small plastic evidence bag and a set of tweezers to pick it up. He sealed the clear bag and noted the time and place. He held it up to look at it more closely. It looked like a fish-scale. It might be inconsquential. But, then again, it might not. He continued to look around. The bathroom had the appearance of being grimey but the torch light showed that it had been thoroughly cleaned. The scale was all he found.

He switched off the torch and went into the main room. There was just room for a bed-chair and a chest of drawers. He looked over at Gaff and asked, 'Anything?'

'Nien, amigo. Only this.' Gaff handed Deckard a pile of photograph print-outs. 'Left them in the drawer unit. Otherwise it looks like Polokov cleaned up and cleared out.' Deckard shuffled through them. They were mainly family snaps and pics of Leon, he assumed, as a little boy. Except he had never been a little boy.

'Strange that he should leave these behind,' Deckard said. He thought for a moment, 'Or maybe not. If he knows these are fake, why keep them? Maybe this is why these replicants are trying to get into Tyrell. They know that their past's are not real. That _they're_ not real. They're learning. And they won't like what they find.'

Polokov wasn't too far away. He had met up with Roy Batty in KoreaTown, after the shooting at Tyrell.

Batty was one of the largest body sizes that replicants were made in. Six foot, six inches. And broad. Body shape A1. He had bleached hair, cropped short. They were both used for heavy lifting but Leon Polokov was a smaller A3 body size. Both of them were dressed in syn-leatherette, like the beat cops. A casual glance would make you think they were cops. Their jackets even had insignia, but the insignia signified nothing. On anyone else it would be a fashion frippery, but on them it looked nearly convincing.

Cool-blue neon dragons danced along the side of a building over the signage of the glass-fronted NickelOdeon Amusement Bar. The neon dragons spat arrows, like fire, that directed people to the Noodle Cafe on the first floor. The NickelOdeon was on the ground floor in the acute angle of a junction where two narrow streets met to make one broad avenue. The NickelOodeon was nice and crowded. A good place to blend, and the crowd gave good cover, if a Bladerunner should happen by.

Roy Batty already knew about Leon's failure to permanently infiltrate The Tyrell Corpration. He was not too concerned though. He placed his hand on Leon shoulders and asked him if he knew why he had been interviewed.

'I don't know Roy. Routine check. Maybe.'

'It would be a big problem,' Roy Batty said. 'Except, I have some information for you that I was able to acquire while you were away. I learnt of a component manufacturer who produced head parts for one-off replicant designs.'

Leon gave a small low groan.

'Yes, Leon. Replicant designs,' Roy Batty had clear blue eyes and he stared at Polokov, almost intimidatorily, 'It seems it IS all true. You and I are not like other men. But this man, a funny little man - he wasn't very pleased to see me - in fact he gave me a very frosty reception. But he gave me some information that may be useful too.

'I put it all to him. Morphology. Longevity. Incept dates. He claimed not to know anything about such things. Claimed he made ears and eyes. Audio-visual sensors only. This man, he said he designed our eyes and ears.' Roy Batty paused. 'All this,' he wafted his arm at the neon lights, the noise in the NickleOdeon Bar, the swelling crash of the rain outside, 'all that we see and hear, we owe to this man. But should we be grateful to have this knowledge? Should we Leon?''

'No!'

'Yes!' Roy Batty said, 'No, is the right answer.'

'What did he say, this man? What did he tell you?'

'Oh. We were right about The Tyrell Corporation. But we were fishing in the wrong pond. Chew - that was this man's name - told me that it is the boss of the company who knows all the answers. He said that this man is a lone-genius. He told me that the employees only know their own specialisation. All our infiltration would never have gained us the information we need. He said - Chew said - that he worked to a special order to create our eyes and ears, and that is all that he knew about the Nexus project. But Tyrell, Eldon Tyrell is the name, he designed our _minds_.' Roy Batty tapped the side of his forehead with his left hand. He stopped and let that information sink into Leon's man-made culture-grown mind.

'Chew seemed able to read my mind too. He knew that we wanted a meeting with Tyrell. He said we would never be able to. But I insisted that I _would_ meet with Eldon Tyrell.' Roy Batty gave a humourless smile. 'Now, Chew worked in a refrigerated environment, something to do with bacterial infection of the components during growth. I felt very comfortable in the cold. I'd only just met Chew but I was really warming to him. Nonetheless I felt that Chew needed an inducement to talk. When I ripped his insulated suit off, he became quite chatty, his teeth chattered too. I told him, "This isn't cold. Try working in Saturn's orbit when your suit's heating system fails." But he got colder and colder. It was then that he offered me a name of a contact. Someone who could help us. This contact CAN get us in.'

Roy Batty grabbed the lapels on Leon's syn-leatherette jacket and pulled him towards him, speaking in a near-whisper, 'One of the few people that Eldon Tyrell trusts. His name is J.F. Sebastian. He is a fellow designer. Freelance, but he's really Tyrell's man. This is the man that Tyrell turns to when he needs to sound out an idea. He lives in Nuevo Frisco. A job for Pris, I think. You never know about San Francisco. So I've heard. But Pris is a good place to start.'

Chapter 7.

Deckard had left the Yukon building and deposited the SFPD heli-car at the precinct. He took a tram back to KoreaTown to pick up his own car. A stange old electric model, it was like a pyramid of strengthened perspex on wheels. He drove home to his apartment block. Even for Frisco night-rain, this rain was heavier than usual. Sheet lightening was flashing insistently over the bay. Deckard had long since had a second windshield wiper added to his vehicle, but even with both on full power they could hardly keep the windshield clear.

Ideas of dark portents flickered through his mind - of rain and floods, and of tornados with frogs and fish, and of plagues. Of pestilence and famine.

It had been a long and informative day for him. Anyone else, an android designer especially, would have considered a meeting with Doctor Tyrell to be an extraordinary honour, but for Deckard it was just another day at the workface.

Tyrell had been in a talkative, even confessional mood, so Deckard had kept quiet and let him talk. He assumed that Tyrell had put two and two together about the shooting of Holden by Leon Polokov. He assumed that Tyrell knew where Leon had come from, and that he would be accompanied by others. He had not detected a sense of personal fear in Doctor Tyrell at any point in the meeting.

Deckard would have liked to have broached other curious aspects of this case but had been under instructions from Bryant to confine the meeting to the application of the V-K Test. The Test, he thought - after the long confessional with Tyrell - it had almost slipped his mind. I'll have to type it up and send it to Bryant before I go to bed.

The apartment tower Deckard lived in had been constructed in the grounds occupied by the Van Doren Mansion. The mansion was still there, built in the French Belle Epoque style that was current when the Van Doren's had made a fortune designing and manufacturing tool-making equipment, and had owned the land of this entire block. He stopped his car for a moment at the ornate iron gates. The gates were controlled by a long defunct technology. So Deckard projected the infra-red beam from the fender, and the gates swung open. He drove around the old mansion and down into the basement car-park of the apartment block. He ensured that the car was parked over the recharge induction port and walked over to the elevator.

He was tired. Very tired. He stepped into the elevator and the voice print security device asked for his name and apartment number. He yawned as he gave his name and the number.

'Do not recognise,' the system said, 'Please repeat.'

'Deckard. 97,' he repeated.

'Deckard. 97,' it confirmed. 'Good evening Mr Deckard. Thank-you. Danke. Merci.' The system had never been updated to include anything beyond European langauges.

'And danke, to you too,' he said wearily. He leant his head against the elevator wall and closed his eyes. In an instant he sensed a movement. Somehow, the replicant that he had met at Tyrell's, Rachael, was in the elevator and had suddenly stepped forward from the opposite corner. He hadn't noticed her, somehow. Her blouse was open, she was bare-breasted. He knew she was here to assassinate him. He reached swiftly into his jacket for his gun, but he knew that she had him. She would kick-kill before he could draw. Then the auto-system voice came on again, 'Floor fifty-seven, Thank you. Danke. Merci.'

Deckard opened his eyes. I dreamt, he realised. In the instant that I had closed my eyes, I had dreamt. He rolled his forehead over the cool metal of the elevator walls. The elevator doors were standing open. He shook his head and fished into his pocket for his access key-card.

The apartment blocks service tower was built so that you had to cross a short walkway to the corridor where the apartments were. This must have seemed a good idea when it was originally built, in the constant sunshine of the pre-war world, before the constant night-rains. But now, it meant that Deckard was stepping into the rainy maelstrom that happened every evening for anyone over the fifth floor. He put his head down and gathered his overcoat around him as he made a dash for the enclosed corridor at the other end, his key-card ready in hand.

In this apartment block all resident's had to identify themselves by voice-print at the ground-floor entrance, and to use the elevator. Then they had a key-card that had to be used to gain access to the apartment corridor's and the apartments themselves. Sometimes resident's would wedge the corridor door open. As Deckard got to the door he saw that this was not one of those occasions. As he flashed the key-card at the reader a woman's voice sounded through the noise of the wind and rain.

'I wanted to see you...'

He swiftly turned, bending low as he did so to miss the incoming kick, as he drew his Razr gun. She stepped out of the shadow by the elevator. It was the replicant, Rachael. Had his dream been a premonition? Or wishful thinking.

'So I waited,' she continued. She seemed unconcerned that he had drawn a gun.

'Lady,' he said, shaking his head. He lowered the gun but kept it at waist height, and aimed. 'That is just about the best way to get your self shot. What is it you want? How did you get here?'

She spoke. She said his name, his floor and apartment number. It was HIS voice coming out of HER mouth. An odd effect, when seen and heard in the flesh.

'Voice sampling and synthesis,' he said. 'Obviously. But WHY are you here...?'

'I don't know why he told you what he did...,' she said. There was a pleading tone in her voice that he hadn't heard in a replicant before. It was very - human.

'Neither do I,' Deckard said, 'Why are you here?'

'He won't see me.'

'I'm still waiting for an answer. Why are you here?'

'May I come in?'

'If he doesn't want to see you. You have a room at Tyrell's surely. Or are you stored in a cupboard, when Tyrell doesn't want to play with you? If he doesn't want you, there are hotels too.' Then he repeated his question, slowly, emphasising each word, 'Why - are - you - here?'

He still held the gun drawn in one hand and he fiddled with the access-card with the other, not wanting to turn his back on her. After all, why wouldn't she be a kick-kill model? But who would want me dead, anyway? Deckard thought.

She was looking down at her feet, and seemed to sob, 'You think I'm a replicant, don't you?' she said.

He thought, how do I get rid of her? There was a flash of cloud rending lightening followed by a shattering crack of thunder that rolled, loud and long.

'Here,' he said, and he gave her his access-card. 'Open the door. You can come in, if just so I can get out of the rain.' Of course, as a replicant - made for harsh, off-world and outer-System work - she hadn't given any indication of noticing the weather. She took the key-card and he angled himself behind her with the gun at her back. His finger fidgeted on the trigger button. She opened the door and stepped inside the corridor and he followed her inside.

'Straight down, to the left and on the left,' he said.

She turned to hand the key-card back to him. She didn't seem to notice that he still had the gun drawn but Deckard reckoned that with their enhanced peripheral vision she must've registered it.

'Hold onto it. You can let us both into the apartment too,' he said. They walked down the corridor and she opened the door. As soon as they were inside he said, 'Fix me a drink, there's scotch and glasses on the kitchen counter. Make one for yourself. I like it over ice. No water.' He reholstered his gun while he removed his overcoat. Might as well get some use out of it while its here, he thought. She walked into the living-room and stood in the centre of the room.

'Look at these,' she said, holding out a handful of photo print-outs, 'this one on the top is me with my mother when I was four...'

'Fix the drinks,' Deckard ordered. She remained standing in the centre of the room holding the photos out to him. He hung up his overcoat and stood by the door.

'I'll take a look at them, but I think I know what I'm going to see,' he said. He unsnapped the gun holster from the shoulder strap and fixed it on his waist belt. He didn't need to keep it concealed now and it was easier to draw from the hip. 'You fix the drinks while I look through them.'

Rachael walked over to him and handed him the photo print-outs and turned toward the kitchen to pour him a drink. He watched her in the half-light of his living-room. She was wearing a skirt with a higher hem now and he noticed her finely shaped legs as she walked away.

When she was stood at the kitchen counter he turned his attention to the photos. As he quickly shuffled through them he saw, as he had assumed, that they were the same as Leon's. Except Rachael was pictured with her mother on the porch - the same mother as Leon's and on the same porch. And on the exact same fairground ride as Leon. And on the same beach as Leon. And so on.

Tyrell Corporation hadn't tried very hard to give them individual identities. Maybe its all part of an experiment. Had they all met and started to exchange stories about their past? How could that happen? There was an entire Solar system to disperse them around! Deckard's mind was beginning to race again, juggling scenario's, purposes and motives.

Rachael brought him his scotch. She hadn't poured one for herself. He took it from her and swilled the glass around to let the ice chill it further.

'You're not having one?' he asked.

'No,' she said, 'Eldon doesn't like me to drink.'

There was something about the tone of voice she was speaking in. She sounded sad. Deckard shrugged and drank down the scotch.

'Well?' she said. He realised he was going to have to tackle this with some care. He handed her the photos back. And placed his hand on the butt of his gun. Just in case.

'Remember when you were six? You and a neighbours boy, a friend, snuck into an empty building through the basement window. He showed you his and then when it was your turn, you chickened out and you ran. You cut your knee on a piece of glass as you clambered out of the basement. You ever tell anyone that? Anyone. So how do I know? And you remember that spider that you watched build a web outside your window during summer when you were ten? Remember that? One day there was an egg, and it hatched...'

'It hatched,' Rachael said, 'and a hundred baby spiders came out...'

'...and they ate her,' Deckard completed her sentence.

'How do you know that?' she asked.

'They're implants, it's Tyrell's new big idea. Memory implants. They're not your memories. They're somebody else's. I saw the memory scenario's earlier today. Doctor,' he emphasised the word Doctor, 'Tyrell showed them to me earlier today.' Then Deckard nodded towards the photo-pics Rachael held in her hand. 'I saw those print-outs earlier today as well.'

Rachael looked at him, not comprehending what he meant.

'That's right. Except the child in the picture wasn't you. It was another replicant, named Leon Polokov. Perhaps you know him? Same mother. On the same porch. Even the same pose. The same beach. Same everything.'

Rachael's lip started to quiver.

'There aren't that many of you,' Deckard said, '... yet. One day they'll be dispersed across the Solar system. Some _thing_ that looks a lot like you. But, for now, they're just a few of you. And you all have the same memories. Tyrell gave copies of the memory scenario sheets to the department.'

The living-room lit up with a late-flying heli-taxi rounding a nearby building. Deckard could see her eyes shining, moistly. He watched her face moving as she was trying not to cry.

Deckard felt... well, what did he feel exactly?

'Okay,' he said. He put down his glass and gestured with his hands, 'I just made a bad joke. That's all.'

'But how did you know?'

'Most kids play 'Show Me' at sometime. And as for the spider, that is what spider's do.'

'But I _did_ watch it all summer long.'

'Most kids do,' said Deckard, 'That is how I knew you did.'

She gave a slight smile, but her forehead crinkled, still trying not to cry.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'No. Really.'

Now, she started to cry.

'You're not a replicant,' he said flatly, 'I'm sorry. I should've said anything like that. I was just messing with your mind. That's all.' She looked at him from under her long lashes. Confused, maybe a little angry. But mostly, she looked sad.

What am I doing? he thought, I'm trying to comfort a replicant! Deckard was still wary. How could he be sure of the reaction when he had just undermined what, false, memories she had? What do you do with people when they feel sad and tearful? You offer them a drink. So Deckard tried that.

'Do you want a drink?' She continued to look at him, unspeaking, tears spilling over and running down her cheeks. She used the back of her hand to wipe them off her chin and jawline. He was about to put his arm around her, a natural reaction, but he cautioned himself. Deckard kept his distance, a flying-kick distance, from her. Instead he said 'I'll get you a drink.' He backed off to the kitchen, keeping his face toward her, his hand on the butt of his gun.

He picked a mug out of the sink and took a hygenic wipe out of its wrapper and quickly rubbed it over the inside and outside of the mug. Then he turned his attention to finding the beverage cartons. He looked through to the living room. Rachael was standing where she had been, silhouetted against the window as the beam's from another heli-craft shone into the living-room. He saw her closely examining one of the photo print-outs she had handed him, and which he had dismissed. Then she shuffled quickly through the rest. The heli-cars beams blinded him for a few moments and he put up his arm to shield his eyes.

'Tea or coffee? Or scotch?' he asked. 'I prefer TsingTao,' he added.

The heli-craft flew by, the back-wash from the rotors rattled the glass in the window frames. The old files and loose papers he had on the window ledge wafted and rustled under the paperwieghts. The dazzling beams of light dimmed as it flew past. He could see her again. She turned her face towards him for a moment, and then turned toward the door and walked out.

Deckard walked out of the kitchen, relieved to see her go. Yet also strangely saddened. He went back to the kitchen counter and poured himself another scotch. This time neat. Now that the strangely sad replicant had gone he didn't need the ice in his drink to dilute it. He noticed that Rachael had left the photo print-outs behind. The proof of her past.

An SFPD heli-car passed, its emergency lights rotating, their red-and-blue coloured lights flashed momentarily throughout his room. He sat down and looked through the rest of the print-outs she had left. A mark of her abandonment of her false past? Just like Leon Polokov leaving his precious memories at Hunterwasswer?

As he sat there sipping at his scotch he asked himself not just why this female replicant had found him. He shuffled through the photos again. There was something in one of them that caught his eye. It showed a bedroom with sun streaking the wall, but also with dark shadows. A man with short cropped, blond hair sat off to one side of the room with his back toward the window. His face looked indistinct with the shadow cast over him. Yet his appearance struck Deckard as familiar. He leant over by a table lamp and looked at it more closely in a better light.

It was Roy Batty. The siren from another SFPD heli-craft wailed a block away. This picture raised the question - were Roy Batty, and the others known to Rachael? If so, what significance did this Roy Batty have that she would have a picture of him as part of her past? Was this part of her implanted false past? Or did they really spend time together? And was it important, or just an incidental detail?

Chapter 8.

Nuevo Frisco was down the wrong end of the seven mile long Independence Boulevard. It was a redevelopment from before the last war, straight through the heart of the city. Like an arrow straight to the heart of the city, some people said when it was being cleared. Up at the other end of the Boulevard, over the hill, was the bright centre and the high towers of the newly rebuilt San Francisco. Those brightly lit towers shone over the brim of the hill, with Nuevo Frisco at the other end. Literally, over the hill. Seven miles - and a continent away, so it seemed.

Pris was a Pleasure model. She appeared to be about twenty. She wore a short but shaggy blonde wig, this had a proven affect of making her head appear larger and her face appear smaller. It also made her eyes appear larger within her face. Especially since she wore a very pale foundation. On this occasion, she preferred to stress her eyes. They were made up with thick dark mascara and dark purple eye-shadow, fading subtlely around the edges to a shade of grey plum. If she adopted a certain expression, the accentuated eyes would appeal to a man.

On her lips, unusually for this type of model, she wore no lipstick. She found that men associated the use of lipstick with sexual knowledge and she would usually wear it, but for this job she needed a different appearance.

She was dressed for the job. It wasn't a look that needed to be smart. She wore a short, low-cut strappy and sheer black dress with a semi-transparent meshing with high neck and long sleeves worn over it, opaque black stockings held up with blue ribbons that left about four inches of bare flesh between the hem of the dress and the top of the stockings. This always worked, even though stockings are no more than long socks, the associative effect in a man's mind made them something much more than that. The exposed flesh between the dress and stockings always added to the effect. A large bag hung from her shoulder that bounced off her hip as she walked. She wore high-heeled ankle boots and leg-warmers. She had a thick, but short, jacket which helped to create the effect of her legs being thin but well shaped. Emmaciated, almost.

A waif.

There were times when a smart, glossy, streamlined look worked best. But on this occasion this would be the look that would work. It was a look that didn't fail.

All the earlier efforts that the other replicants had made to infiltrate The Tyrell Corporation had been fruitless because they had believed they only had to get in at any level and they would be able to work from within to hack the information they needed.

Now that they had acquired the vital piece of information from Chew, they knew they needed to get in at the level of the Director-Designer-Genius. And that would have to be through the contact.

Pris could - she would - persuade J.F. Sebastian to get Roy Batty into Eldon Tyrell's sanctum. Then Roy would be able to find the information they needed. Everything they needed to know about morphology. And longevity. About incept dates. And expiry dates. And, especially, about life extensions.

Pris had found the apartment building that J.F. Sebastian occupied. The address that Chew had on hs lips as he died at Roy Batty's hands. Died, because although Chew gave up the information they needed, there were to be no prisoners and no witnesses.

She had scouted it out, before the night-rains came, and she had learnt that he lived alone. Not only alone, but also as the sole resident of this building, and the entire block. When she had found the building it was the crummiest looking building in the crummiest part of the crummiest district in this busted up city. She had waited to see what time J.F. Sebastian came home so that now, on the following day, she had sauntered casually along the road, picking her way round some rubbish in the street. She stepped under the stone canopy of the building. Pris looked about, put the cigarette to her lips and dragged deeply on it. She threw it out into the road and watched the embers of the stub die down on the wet surface.

Twenty minutes earlier, as she walked through the neighbourhood on foot, she had been approched by a couple of hustlers who had said they had a special job for her. Something to do with cooking, it seemed. Spit-roasting, so they had said. An unfamiliar, Earth-based, expression to her. They had arrived at an assumption of her based on how she was dressed and that she was in that district. Neither of them would have been easy for a human woman to injure, let alone kill. She had left both of them dead in an alleyway. One of them with a crushed skull, the other with a snapped spine. All done easily enough. There weren't cops around in this part of the city. She had lit up a cigarette after she emerged from the alleyway and had crossed the road. She enjoyed a cigarette after a killing.

She had received an elbow to the face, but fortunately it was to the left eye socket so the eye make-up would cover it. But now, standing under the canopy waiting for J.F. Sebastian, and just to be sure, she checked her compact to make sure the bruise wasn't coming up. She dabbed some more eye shadow over her eyes, deepening the existing colour down to a dark damson. She adjusted her dress and jacket and stockings. She had a hole in one of them now. That was alright. It would add to the 'little lost waif' effect.

She made one adjustment, she quickly unzipped her ankle boots and removed the leg-warmers she wore and stuffed them in her capacious bag. She didn't need them. After putting the ankle boots back on, she looked at her reflection in the one remaining intact pane of glass in the apartment blocks front door. She turned to the side. She preferred the long line of her lean legs in the high-heels without the leg-warmers. This adjustment made the end effect appear as though a waif would look well-fed by comparison.

Now she leant against the thick decorated stone column that supported the portico, keeping herself concealed by its bulk. Because of the earlier diversion she had arrived later than she expected, it was only a little over five minutes before J.F. Sebastian had arrived home the night before, so she didn't have long to wait.

She heard the rumbling hum of the odd cube-like utility vehicle that she hd seen him driving the night before. She looked out from behind the column and saw him come along the otherwise traffic-less street. She sat down next to the door of the apartment building amongst the large drift of garbage that had been wind-blown into a corner. She quickly took an armful of loose papers and packaging and burrowed herself down into it and piled it up around her. She put a box on her head. Only her mascaraed and thickly eye-shadowed eyes showed. Big and wide and bright.

J.F. Sebastian parked the vehicle in front of the building and got out. He immediately started fishing around in the large bag he had slung over his shoulder. He was too absorbed looking for it to notice her. So she waited until he came parrellel to where she was concealed and suddenly shook the box off her head. She adopted an expression that was both startled and scared and scattered all the papers and packaging off her. She did this in such a way that it ensured he could not miss the semi-transparent dress hiked up high and the sight of her bare thighs. She scrambled to her feet and dropped her bag and ran, stumbling and bumping into the man as she did so and knocking him over. She skidded in her heels on the wet sidewalk and turned her ankle, slamming her shoulder into the side door of his utility van. She cracked the glass. She stopped and rubbed her shoulder, in pain. She looked back at him with huge eyes.

'Hey!' he called out after her. He was picking himself up off the sidewalk with her bag in his hand. 'Don't forget your bag. I know you women can't go anywhere without your bag.'

She stepped back gingerly. She adopted the appearance of wariness as she reached out and grabbed her bag back, throwing it over her shoulder. They stood looking at each other for a few moments.

'Don't worry,' he said, 'I won't hurt you. What are you doing tucked up in the garbage there, little lady?' The man spoke in the elongated drawl of the South-Eastern states.

'I'm lost' Pris said. She knew a nervous smile would work well here. She smiled. Nervously.

The man swept his hand through his hair and then pawed around his neck nervously.

'I just needed some shelter. From the night-rain. That's all. The paper keeps you warm. You won't report me?'

'Report you. Why?'

'Vagrancy. I'm not a vagrant,' Pris bit her lip. 'I'm just a bit lost.'

'No, no, no!' he assured her, 'I'm not going to do that. We hardly ever see the police along this end of the Boulevard anyway.'

'I'm just lost,' Pris repeated again, she looked at him with a mixture of nervousness and anxiety, 'I don't know this part of the city and there's no more public transport back to the city centre after dark. And I missed the last one before I could get back onto Independence Boulevard. I just wanted to keep warm for the night. That's all.'

'What's your name?' he asked.

'Pris.'

'Mine's J.F. Sebastian. I'm normally just called JF.'

'Hi,' she said. Pris smiled for a moment.

'Hi,' he said. 'Where were you going? Y'live round here?'

She shrugged, saying nothing. He was just starting to turn to open the door to the apartment building. Now, she thought. Pris stepped up close to him. He would 'feel' her closeness to him. She towered over him and smiled broadly, like old friends do.

'We scared each other pretty good, didn't we?'

She pulled at the hem of her dress appearing to tug at it to straighten it and pull it down, but raising it to reveal the tops of her thighs. He moved his eyes so that he appeared to be looking away, but was drawn to the pale skin.

'We sure did!' he said, reflecting her smile back at her.

Pris smiled again and laughed a girlish laugh. She looked down at the ground and looked at him with her head bowed. This is when the dark eye make-up really works. Her eyes appeared wide and large.

'Look. If you're stranded in Nuevo Frisco, do you want to come in?' JF asked. 'Its gotta be better than sleeping under garbage.'

'I was hoping you'd say that,' she said, keeping her smile bright and natural. He smiled nervously up at her and turned to open the door.

I'm in, Pris thought. The smile disappeared from her lips, replaced by a neutral non-expression, that somehow bordered on the malign. She followed him into the apartment building. He stopped immediately on entering. The entrance hall was flooded with light. It was like daytime. It was raining inside.

'Wait a minute, he said, and he took a torch out of his bag and switched it on.

'There's no light in this place 'til you get up to my floor.'

'There lots of light,' she said. JF pointed upwards. The roof canopy of the foyer had once been glass, an advertising blimp drifted over-head with its high-light beams shining directly downward into the foyer at that moment. There was no glass left in the roof so it was raining just as hard indoors as it was outside.

'It'll be pitch black in a few moments,' JF said, adding, 'Quickly. We might as well use their lights while they're there. This way.' JF started a little jog off to the right. Toward an elevator. Pris followed. The express elevator zipped them to the top floor. Only five floors up.

'You live here by yourself?' she asked, knowing the answer.

'Yep. I live pretty much alone right now. Well sort of.'

'Huh?'

'There's no housing shortage round here. Plenty o' room for everybody. If you're looking for a place.'

They exited the elevatior and she followed him as he walked along the corridor to his apartment, fishing in his bag again for the key-card.

'Must get lonely JF.'

'Not really,' he replied. 'I have lots of friends. I make my own.'

'Y'mean, like imaginary friends?'

'Not like that. I'm a genetic designer. D'you know what that is, Pris?' He used her name. He liked that. He opened one of the large wooden double doors to his apartment, at the end of the walkway.

'No,' she answered.

The sound of a tiger growling sounded somewhere in the apartment block. Pris wouldn't know a tiger if saw one, but she sensed in the sound that there was a threat. She looked apprehensive.

'C'mon in. You'll see what I mean,' JF prattled.

She stepped into his apartment. JF called out, 'Yoo-hoo. Home again,' seemingly to no one. He closed the door behind her and slid several large dead-bolts shut. Pris looked around.

The hallway of his apartment was large and almost entirely bare except for what looked like a feature fountain - that wasn't working - in the centre of the room, with bronze mermaids. In one corner there were forty or fifty, what looked like, old shop mannequins piled up with their faces to the wall and a dust cloth covering about half of them.

Around the high ceiling there was an ornate decoration in a fake baroque style. He noticed her looking around.

'Y'like it?' he asked.

'I've never seen anywhere like this before. I've only lived in small places.'

'They're all like this in this building. They're all large. High ceilings. Ornate. And falling to pieces.' He pointed casually at the mannequins, 'I keep meaning to do somthing with them but I never get around to it. I've been very busy lately. I like them just like that. I think of them as a crowd that are all very shy, all whispering between themselves.'

There was a pile of what looked like rubbish, but a neatly piled heap of rubbish, by the fountain.

'What's all that?' asked Pris.

'What?'

Pris pointed at the base of the fountain.

'Y'mean, the books?'

Pris narrowed her eyes and looked perplexed, she had never heard the word before. 'What're they for?'

'For reading.'

Pris looked blank. JF started to walk forward, but stopped. He put his finger to his lips, indicating "hush", even though she hadn't said anything. 'I hear footsteps,' he said.

A rhythmic beating of boots on floor boards sounded in the next room. Two small automata appeared marching shoulder-to-shoulder and in-step came through the doorway. One was a stunted misshapen figure with a Pinnochio nose and dressed in a brown uniform in the style of the old European imperial manner and the spiked helmet of the old German army. The other was a large teddy bear in a Napoleonic uniform with sash and medals. They marched together into the hallway and halted with a stamp of the feet.

'Home again. Home again, jiggidy-jig,' they chorused to JF.

'Friends of yours?' she asked.

'Hi there, fellas,' he said to them. He spoke to Pris, 'That's Kaiser Wilhelm' on the left,' he said, 'or just plain Bill, for short. And that is Ready-Eddie Teddy on the right.'

'Hello Bill. Hello Ready-Eddie,' Pris said.

'Hello friend,' they replied in unison.

'They're my friends. I made them,' JF said.

The automata wheeled about and marched back into the next room. The small disfigured one followed the large teddy, it misjudged his step, and bumped into the door post. It gave a squeaking sound as it did so. JF was looking up at Pris as this happened.

'He does that all the time,' he said, 'I must fix it.'

She smiled. Once she sensed his eyes were no longer on her, the smile dissolved again into the, somehow malign, non-expression.

'They're off to bring me my meal. I'll get them to make you something. Alright?'

Pris looked big-eyed again and nodded.

'They can do that?' she asked with an incredulous tone in her voice.

'They're not automata y'know. Anything you can do, they can do. I just make them look that way. Because I can, and I like to make some things like this. It is so different to what I usually work on. These are the friends I make,' JF said. 'What about your folks then?'

'I'm sort of an orphan,' Pris replied.

'Come through,' JF said and he ushered her into a long narrow dining room with a long dining table. He never dined alone. In addition to himself there were places set for Kaiser Willhelm and Ready-Eddie Teddy.

An English butler - with a varnished wooden head - came into the dining-room carrying a tray.

'Good evening, sir,' the butler said.

He set out a range of small bowls in front of JF and he looked up at the 'butler'.

'Good evening. And thank-you, MacCauley,' JF said. 'I have a guest for dinner tonight and would like you to prepare... hold on one moment,' JF turned to Pris and half-whispered, 'What would you like to eat?'

'I don't know. What are you eating?'

'Chinese. Go on. Try it.'

She picked at it and tasted it.

'I like it. I'd like some.' She twisted her body to look at MacCauley, bringing one leg up as she so and resing it on the edge of the seat. JF looked down at the bare flesh and how her dress had ridden up and showed her panties.

'Another one of these please, MacCauley.'

'Very good, sir.'

Kaiser Willhelm and Ready Teddy came in and sat down. MacCauley set down play-food at their places.

'They can't eat,' he said to Pris. 'Fellas,' he said and leant over conspiratorially at Kaiser Bill and Ready-Eddie Teddy. 'Change to the usual routine. We have a guest for dinner tonight. I'd like you to be on your best behaviour. Alright?' He looked over at Pris and she laughed.

'Nina!' JF called out.

'Whose Nina?' Pris whispered.

'You'll see.' An automata, styled like a ballerina, pirouetted through the dining-room door. 'She doesn't eat either,' said JF, 'I just like to have her around.'

She danced down the length of the table and back again.

'She's always like this,' he said as an aside to Pris. He didn't notice that her expression had slid back to the odd expressionlessness as Pris watched the ballerina-automata.

'Sit down, Nina.' JF said. He leaned over to Pris. 'She's showing off, that's all.' Then addressed Nina again, 'Take the weight off your points'.'

Chapter 9.

After Rachael had left and Deckard continued to shuffle through the photos she had left. He also had another couple of scotchs. He decided to abandon his attempt to drain the rest of the bottle. He stepped over to his electric mini-grand. He sat down and picked out a few simple sequential chords.

Across the top of the mini-grand were family photographs going back a century and more. Old sepia photos of great-great-great grand-parents, showing them when they were young and then when they were very old, and many ages inbetween. There was another, much more recent picture, of himself sat on the steps of a wooden porch of an old suburban house. From what you could see of it, the porch was just like the porch in the photos that Leon and Rachael had. But a lot of the houses in the old suburbs looked so much alike. He didn't notice how much his mother in the picture looked so much like Leon's and Rachael's in the pics he had seen. It was a blurry photo anyway.

The scotch was making him sleepy, and he was tired already. There was something I was supposed to do before I went to bed, he realised. His thoughts were becoming scotch-befuddled. The image of Roy Batty, that he had retrieved from the pile of photographs Rachael had left behind, was stood on the music-stand. He took another sip of scotch. There was something about Rachael. Something that reminded him, so very dimly, of someone. In the next moment Rachael was stood in the centre of his living room. Alongside her stood a unicor...

He awoke.

He had slept, and instantly dreamt again.

He picked the photo of Roy Batty off the music stand and stood up. He took one step back, he was a little unsteady as he walked across his living room. Lets get this done, at least, before I go to bed. He stepped over and pushed the photo into the scanner. The photo came up on the screen with a blue grid overlaid on it. Deckard slumped down in the big comfortable chair in front of the screen. He gave a series of voice commands, the image zoomed in and out and around the image with each command. There was a narrow room behind the bedroom Roy Batty sat in. On the wall in that room was a convex mirror with a reflection showing. He gave voice commands to zoom in on that. As he zoomed about the image, he could see, in the hi-res image, a woman lying on a couch-bed in the smaller room, caught in the reflection in the convex mirror. She had a black kimono decorated with white stylised jasmine blossoms lying over her. She was asleep, or had her eyes closed. She had a mark, a tattoo showing on the side of her face and neck, part concealed by her hair line. It was either a dragon or a snake. He recognised her from the template he had seen in Bryant's office. From the screen-shot. It was her. The kick-kill replicant idented as Zhora.

Deckard gave the voice command for a hard-copy print-out from this pic. He looked closely at the print, then turned his attention back to the image as it appeared on the screen. There was something draped over a room screen. It looked like it was made of grey or silver sequins. Or scales. It occured to him that the scale he had picked out of Leon Polokov's shower stall might be connected to this. Whatever it was that was draped over the screen, it was clearly too large to be a fish. Like an eel in length, or longer. Except eels don't have scales. It could be a snake. Maybe a dragon. You never quite know what people will get made-to-order. But what would a replicant, recently arrived on Earth, need such a creature for? he thought. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out the small evidence bag and looked at the scale.

As he sat in the deep comfort of the chair Deckard couldn't be bothered to go to bed. As he was drifting off to sleep, he was thinking over the case he had. And Tyrell. Deckard couldn't figure him. Deckard wondered if was being drawn into a large game of bluff. But, if that was so - to what end?

What did he have to go on? A pile of photo's left behind by the female replicant, who had, for no apparent reason turned up unannounced and uninvited. Perhaps to deliberately leave this pile of photos? It was a duplicate of Leon's set of photos. Except it had this image of Roy Batty. And it turned out that it also had a picture of Zhora, at an 'unknown' address. And as they appear now, not as they appeared in their 'template' shots.

When you have so little to go on, you have to use what you have. Got to find why this picture is amongst all the others that Rachael had. Got to find the maker of the scale. Then find the maker. Then find the buyer. It might lead somewhere, it might not. I'll start by going to...

Deckard slept. A restful and dreamless sleep, at last.

Chapter 10.

Morning scarcely dawned. The night skies lightened from night black to a deep gloom. The night rains did not abate with the end of the night.

Deckard made his way to the Livestock Market to follow the very slender lead of the fish-scale found at Leon's old place. The Livestock Market was adjacent to KoreaTown, down by the waterfront. Any kind of creature, real or synthetic, was available. The real animals attracted astonishing prices but a synthetic one could be had at quite a reasonable price.

A lot of people held that pets were just 'shit-machines'. You fed, scarce, food in at one end. They did nothing at all for you. Then, a day later, you got shit out the other. Before repeating the process over and over again. That is all they did. For the people who held to this view, synthetic animals held the advantage over the real, in that they weren't nearly as expensive and they didn't produce shit. For such people, though, the advantages of a pet were of no interest to them. Warmth? Companionship? Comfort? These things counted for nothing to these sorts of people.

Deckard was one of those people. And who would want a snake for warmth or comfort anyway he thought, as he made his way to one of the Authenticators. She was an old Korean woman. A lot of the refugees were old now. Most, although they had survived, had been sterilised by being exposed to too much radiation for too long. If they hadn't had children when the last war broke out, or their children had not survived the war, they often bought a pet to keep them company. To have a heartbeat in their homes other than their own.

'Fish?' he asked simply, holding the small evidence bag, cocking an eyebrow at her. Sometimes it was easier to talk with facial expressions than it was with spoken langauge.

She took the scale out of the bag and pushed it under a high-power microscope that automatically searched the surface for any possible microscopic bar-codes that had to be on evey scale, (in this case) or strand of hair, or plume, or feather.

An animal from the Livestock Market had to be authenticated. A retailer, or craftsman, couldn't sell it without a certificate of authentification. The law was aimed mainly at farm animal sales. A milk cow that can't produce milk, or reproduce, is outright fraud. But for the sake of uniformity it was applied to all animal sales. Especially when there were kitten farms and ostrich farms, and farms for all sorts of real animals, to be kept as pets. With such a huge price differential, buyers wanted the reassurance of a certificate of authentification.

The animals didn't need to be as 'realistic' as the human replicants. In fact, the replicants didn't need to be so realistic, either. But they were anyway. The human replicants did have identifiers, on organ and muscle tissue and bone, but you needed to get them into a body-scanner to read it. The dermis was self-renewing so any identifiers on skin-cells were soon obliterated.

'I'd like to see,' Deckard said and leant over the counter. The old woman turned the screen so he could see it more easily. They both watched the screen as the microscope scanned the sample.

'There is much surface detail,' she said, 'Fine work. I will take it up to a higher resolution.' It turned out that this woman had excellent English, with only a little of her original accent remaining. 'There it is,' she said, 'the makers serial number. 9906947-XB71. Let me check that. She cut-and-pasted the serial number into a box on another screen. 'Ah,' she said, 'not fish. Snake. Made by Abdul Ben Hassan. It is his manufacturers' ident. He holds a Licence for Artificiers. It is Number XB-71.'

'And where is he?'

'You need to go along to the Fish and Feather Alley. Fifth aisle. Unit 14.'

Deckard looked about the slow moving, shoving throng. 'Which way?' he asked.

'Go left from here,' she replied, 'On the left. Midway down. Easy to find.'

Even allowing for the bad smells that drifted on the air in San Francisco, the Livestock Market was an assault. Practically any large beast that could be traded was here. So, all the smells that animals can produce were along here. He didn't usually come down to this market. This is why they're called 'shit-machines', Deckard thought. He picked his way carefully along the walkway, since quite a few of the animals had been herded along here. He walked through the throng toward the fifth aisle as directed and was looking at a very cute looking - if smelly - minature horse on the corner by the entrance to the aisle. He tickled it under the chin and it neighed at him. He turned into the alleyway and immediately stood aside as a couple of ostrich wranglers herded a small group of ostriches round the corner out of the aisle.

Abdul Hassan was easy to find. Midway down on the left, as he'd been told. Abdul Hassan stood at the doorway in a light coloured jacket and balancing, rather than wearing, a fez upon his large head. He had a long snake of some type around his neck, like he was wearing a scarf. It was a stall filled with glass boxes and tanks with any sliding, slithering creature that seemed to have ever existed. With a few others too, produced from someones over-active imagination. He gestured to prospective buyers as they walked along. But most people were walking past, looking for something furrier. Something cuter. Deckard made to step into his stall, and Abdul Hassan stood aside to let him in. He stepped behind his counter, gesturing around at the creatures in their tanks.

'What is it that you would like?'

'I'd like some answers. I'm a police officer. You hold the Licence for Artificiers XB-71?'

'That is correct. What is it you want?'

'I have a snake scale from one of your products. Found on the premises of a suspect. I need information.'

'If it wasn't bought second-hand,' Abdul Hassen said defensively. 'None of my stock are poisoness.'

'That's alright Mr Hassan,' Deckard assured him, 'I have a suspect who may have one of your snakes. I need all the information about them that you have.'

'There are not many people that can afford my work.'

'They can't be that expensive,' Deckard observed. 'Real ones are the ones that cost.'

'Let me see it, please.'

Deckard handed him the snake scale. Hassan put it into his scanner.

'Ah yes, this is one of my finest quality...'

'Forget the sales pitch, pal,' Deckard was curt. 'Who would've bought it.'

'Very few could possibly afford this.'

'How few?'

'Very few. Rare quality.'

'You said,' Deckard suddenly reached across and knocked Hassan's fez off his head and grabbed his tie, 'Who bought this one?'

Abdul Ben Hassan, still being held by the necktie, looked at the screen again and memorised the serial number. He muttered it over and over to himself as he checked his register of sales.

'Ahhh. Yes. This one was bought by Taffy Lewis. Down in the Forth Sector, ChinaTown. He gave an address. 11-40 Olmec Avenue.'

Deckard let go of his tie and said, 'Thank you for your compliance,' and stepped out of the stall.

A rattlesnake was coiled in one of the glass tanks along the front of Hassan's stall. Deckard tapped the front of the glass as he passed and the snake struck out at the glass with its fangs.

Taffy Lewis, eh? Or Tacky Lewis, as he was known in police circles. Deckard didn't know the man, never had to deal with him, or bust him. But Taffy Lewis kept Vice busy enough.

Before Deckard walked over to the Forth Sector he checked in with Bryant, to see if he had been able to make contact again with Doctor Tyrell. Bryant told him that he had been advised that Rachael hadn't returned to Tyrell's the previous night.

I only met her yesterday, Deckard thought to himself as he terminated the call, and now I find that I'm concerned about her. Where she might be. Why she didn't return to Tyrell.

Chapter 11.

The Forth Sector in ChinaTown was neon drenched, night and day. It contained the Encounter Bars that were such a thriving business. For men or women. Desire, Lip2Lip, Freedom, Mano Y Mano, Exotica, Cage Aux Folie, Man Trap, Femme Fatale, Rendezvous, Goldigger, The Grail, The Third Degree, Sin of Pride, The House of Fun, Blond On Blond, Venus Dolls, The Immaculate Deception, Menagerie, Torture Palace, Dominator, Grime, Rest'n'Recreation, Bathtime with Johnny, and Bathtime with Janey. One after another along the main drag. Some people actually lived here in this district, though it was mainly the people who worked in the bars and clubs.

Olmec Avenue - the name was a throw back to the old days when this was a Mexican part of town. Deckard found number 11 Olmec, the premises contained one of the Encounter Bars, Exotica, on the ground floor. A low tower block had been built behind it, in the old yard area from back in the days when this entire area had been family houses. Much has changed, Deckard thought dryly.

He walked down the alley to the apartments behind, stepped into the foyer and checked the residents list. Taffy Lewis was listed as living in the penthouse. He rang the buzzer. After a few moments a woman's face came on the entrance security screen. She looked young yet there were bags under her eyes, her hair was a mess and she was dishevelled. She had a black-eye that she was trying to hide with her hand.

'Yeah?'

'Taffy Lewis.'

'And you are?'

'An old friend. Just got into town,' Deckard thought a big smile might help, so he smiled, 'Where is my man?'

'He's working?'

'Working?'

'That's right.'

'I haven't seen him for a while. Where's he working nowadays?'

'Downstairs. At Exotica. You just walked past it.'

'Oh yeah, that's right.'

'Don't mention it.'

'Thanks,' he said.

'No, really. Don't mention I told you,' she said. She cut the connection from her side and the screen went back to the spinning interweaving multicoloured strands of colour.

Deckard walked back down the alleyway and onto Olmec again. Above the door of Exotica there were two women in fluffy fake-fur bikini's dancing within a large Perspex bubble. The fur was pure white so Deckard assumed it was baby-seal fake-fur. They were each wearing ice-hockey goalie masks with Geisha-style make-up painted on them. To add to the bizarre effect they had pig's snouts added. Is that dancing? thought Deckard, I think that's what they're doing. Though it involved a lot of embracing each other and stroking their skin and rubbing their snout's together.

He walked in. Encounter Bars were all things to all people in the modern world. Bar, cafe, restaurant, dance club, meeting place, strip-joint, mott, sex-club, bawdy house, brothel. Something for practically everyone. Even for a chuchman - there were always souls to save, from fun. Or if saving souls wasn't possible, then there were lots of souls to pester.

It was mid-afternoon, and busy. The early-shift workers were winding down before they went home, then the day-workers came in to populate the Bar. At this time of the day there were about two women for every man in the place. Most of them were hostesses. Practically everyone was smoking Drizapone, in long-stemmed clay pipes. Deckard walked over to the bar and asked a barman where Taffy Lewis was.

'Don't tell me. I'll walk along the bar, you give a nod when I get to him. Then you can say you didn't say anything.'

Deckard walked along the bar keeping an eye on the bartender. Deckard got along to the far end of the bar, he was stood behind a fat man near the door. He got the nod. Deckard continued walking past Lewis, looking him over as he did so. The man was large, running to corpulence. His hair was raven black but that colour was obviously out of a bottle of dye. He wore large, thick silver and platinum rings on each of his fingers, like a rich man's knuckle-dusters. So that's Taffy Lewis, thought Deckard.

He turned and approached him from over Lewis's left shoulder.

'Taffy Lewis?' Deckard said, watching him in the mirrors set behind the bar. He dug into his inside jacket pocket for his department I.D. and the hard-copy he'd taken of Zhora. 'I've a few questions for you. You ever buy snakes from the Egyptian?'

'All the time. Where'd you think these came from?' Lewis lifted one of his feet, to show the snakeskin boots.

'I'm talking about one of the living replicas from the Livestock Market.'

'Never go there.'

'I think you do.' Now Deckard showed the grainey printout of Zhora, 'Know this girl?'

'Never seen her. Now buzz off!'

'Is your licence in order? Pal.' Deckard spat the words directly into Lewis's face.

'How much will it take?' Lewis asked.

Deckard leaned into Lewis, pressing him against the bar, he grabbed his lapels and ground a steel-tipped heel, hard, down onto a snake-skin booted foot. 'I'm not on the take. Pal. Comprendi?'

'So what do you want?'

'Cooperation.'

'I can do that.' Deckard let go of his lapels and leaned back, away from him.

'Hey, Louie,' Lewis clicked his fingers at a bartender. 'This man is dry. Give him one on the house.' He gave Deckard a glance that was reptilian, except a reptile would've given a warmer look.

'The girl?' Deckard insisted.

'You'll see,' Lewis said. 'I didn't say anything but I ain't dumb.' He flicked his eyes toward the next room, where the exotic shows took place. 'Take a look. You'll see. In a minute. You'll see.'

Deckard took the drink proferred by the barman served in a cocktail glass. 'And with that, it concludes our business,' Taffy Lewis looked at Deckard. 'The show will be starting in a minute. Enjoy. For you.' He walked away. Glass in one hand, talking into the phone in his other hand.

Deckard turned towards the room Taffy Lewis had indicated. As he walked over to it, dodging a couple who were dancing - or fighting, he took another drink from the glass. An announcement came over the PA.

'Ladies and gentlemen. Taffy Lewis and the Exotica presents Miss Salome and the snake. Watch her take the pleasure from the serpent that once corrupted man... ' A synthetic beat started with some ersatz reedy pipe snake-charmer music playing over it. Deckard smiled at the ridiculous introduction and walked casually through to the other room.

'Salome' had just taken the stage with the snake coiled around her body. She wore it like a costume. It was Zhora. Deckard walked through the three-quarters full room into the shadow by the side of the stage. If this is Zhora, perhaps one of the other replicants is here too. He looked around for Roy Batty or Leon Polokov. And there were always those replicants with outstanding warrents, that had come to Earth and were never traced, who had successfully blended with the host population.

Taffy Lewis appeared at his elbow, 'You're not watching the show. Don't don't you like the show, Mr Policeman?'

'Thanks,' Deckard said. 'I need to get into the backstage area.'

'It shall be done.' Again, with an imperceptible gesture from Lewis, a security man appeared. Lewis spoke quietly to him. 'He'll show you in.' He added, by way of a farewell, 'If we must do business again. Remember how I said nuthin'. An' how I helped.'

Deckard nodded and followed the security man.

Deckard stepped into a throng of Showgirls and a few Showmen preparing for the late-afternoon show, looking for her dressing room. It occurred to him that Taffy Lewis or one of his staff might warn Zhora as she came off stage so decided to by the stage. A passing Showgirl grabbed him by the arm and said, 'Hey. No fan's in the backstage area. Not during showtime.' Deckard flashed his I.D. and she let go and looked at him as if he were plague-ridden as she walked away.

The snake-charming music was still droning on but the drumbeats had quickened their pace. He checked around to ensure there was no way out other than past him. The only exit was at the immediate rear of the stage. He would know if she was going to bolt for that. Deckard discreetly removed his gun from the shoulder holster and placed it in his waistbelt holster. Always easier to draw and shoot from the hip.

Zhora was half-way through her act.

Deckard took out his credit card sized wallet and started to shuffle through the deck of false I.D. cards, for something that might be usable. He'd been briefly assigned to Vice a few years back and still had a fake card. Perfect, he thought. He picked that I.D., it read 'Philip Deks; Committee on Moral Abuses'.

Deckard looked up for a moment and saw Zhora - Salome - facing away from the audience, bent over. And where was that snake going? He surmised her show was coming to an end. The music stopped and a roar and applause went up from the audience.

A group of a dozen or so women in, what looked like, very brief 'Little Bo-Beep' costumes walked past him toward the stage. The next act. They obscured his view of Zhora for a few moments. He looked about them, trying to follow Zhora's movements. She was walking straight back to the dressing rooms. A stagehand had thrown her a wrap as she came off stage but she didn't put it on, just draped it over one shoulder and held it around her waist. Otherwise she was wearing only sequins and glitter. And the snake.

He followed her. As she got to the dressing-room door he appeared at her shoulder.

'Miss Salome,' he said, 'I'm from the American Federation of Variety Artists.' She glanced at him.

'Oh yeah?' she smiled lop-sidedly at him. It was an attractive smile.

'That's right. I'm not here to make you join. Not my department.'

Zhora stepped into her room and flung the wrap off. He followed her in and closed the door after himself.

'Actually I'm here from the Confidential Committee on Moral Abuses.' He proferred the card, but she ignored it. She started to unwind the snake into a whickerwork basket.

'The Confidential Committee on Moral Abuses? That's a joke. Right?'

'No ma'am. Y'see there's been reports that the management has been taking liberties with the performers. Have you felt yourself to be exploited in anyway? Anyway at all?' he pressed.

'You want to hear about exploitation? Get along to Grime. THAT is exploitation. This is a rose garden by comparison. Anyone here complaining about the conditions shouldn't be working this business.'

'But was there anything you needed to do to get this job. Anything lewd, or unsavory, or otherwise repulsive to your person. I saw your show. That snake gets around.' He blinked quickly, a couple of times.

'I turned up. I auditioned. That's how I got this job.'

'You weren't exploited, at all?' Deckard made his voice sound incredulous.

She looked at him and laughed. 'Are you for real?'

'The State is very serious about this sort of thing. There is a lot of pressure for a crack-down on lewdness and abuse. It's a women's rights thing.'

'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'Well. Give the Committee a message, from me. Keep their Committee on Moral Excuses away from where I can see them. And I'll keep my liberties,' she indicated the building where she worked, 'away from where they can see them.'

'But they can see it. They've got dancers out in the street.'

'Hardly lewd though. That's light-entertainment. And you can only see it if you come down this part of the avenue. It's one avenue in how many streets, and avenues, and boulevards in Frisco?' she picked a towel out of a bag on a dressing-table, 'Now, get out of my way.'

'Still. I'd like to check your dressing room. If I may?'

'For what?'

'For holes.'

'Holes?'

'You'd be surprised what a guy would go through to get a glimpse of a beautiful body.'

'Like posing as someone from the State Committee of Moral Excuses?'

'It's serious work, ma'am. They drill holes to watch a lady undress.'

'What would be the point of that? They can watch me undress in front of a room full of people. Six times every day. And at Femme Fatale, and at Menagerie. At Dominator and Grime, before that. They'll have seen me on my back. On my knees. On all fours. Bent over. Crab. Handstands and cartwheels. What more could they see that they haven't already seen?'

'You don't understand, Miss. That isn't what they like. They like the thrill of seeing a woman, clandestinely...'

'Go ahead. It's none of my business.'

Deckard noticed the change of tone in her voice. She shrugged and gave a humourless smile as she walked past him to step into the shower. As her back turned to him all expression dissolved from her face leaving a, seemingly, malign non-expression. When Deckard was stood near to Zhora he had kept his gun hand close to his gun, but discreetly done.

As she showered, Deckard looked around the dressing room for - anything. Anything that might be a lead. A connection to Polokov. Polokov was a known shooter. He had nothing on either Roy Batty or Zhora, just yet. They must have been in on the killing on the shuttle.

Zhora stepped out of the shower and started to dress. She picked up the short Roman skirt and wrapped it around her waist, quickly buckling it. She glanced over at Deckard, who had switched to looking around the walls and the ceiling.

'Find anything?' she asked sardonically.

'Not so far.'

'That's becasue there isn't anything to find. And no one here would be bothered.' She stepped into her sandals snapped them closed and began strapping on her grieves.

Deckard looked at her as he made it seem that he was looking closely at the snake.

'Do you own this?'

'It belongs to the club,' she replied.

'Is it a real snake?'

'Of course it isn't real. Who would be here if they could afford a real snake. They'd be off-Earth. That's where I'd be.' Deckard wondered if she might be joking with him. Since off-Earth was where she'd come from. Except she doesn't know I know her. Does she?

'Look. Employment is employment,' she proferred. 'And this pays a lot better than the jobs the poor stiffs who come here have to work at. If you have any real interest in "Abusues", you need to look at some of the crummy jobs people have to do just to make a living, let alone afford to come a place like this.'

'Must get chilly in winter.'

She looked at him incredulously. And walked past him to pick up the rest of her outfit. 'Look Mister. I'm in a hurry. I've got places to go and people to meet. I was just about out the door between shows when I get the word I'm to put on an extra show. Now I'm late.' She looked and sounded harrassed by time commitments. She picked up her breastplate and placed it over her torso. She turned her back on Deckard, immediately the appearance of being rushed for time evaporated from her face. She said, 'Do something useful. Do up the clip at the back for me. Won't you? Quickly. I'm in a rush.'

The sound of applause came through to the dressing room from the stage. He took his hand off the butt of his gun and got hold of one end of the clip. As he did so Zhora drove her elbow hard into his gut. She span quickly and delivered a second blow with the heel of her hand. Deckard was sent flying backwards. The only reason Zhora's third strike - the kill-kick - didn't kill him was because the second blow had struck him so hard he had fallen out of the effective range of the kick. He landed on an inflatable couch in the dressing room and her forth blow was misdirected because of the way he bounced off the inflatable, the blow only glancing across his chin. Deckard was deeply winded but his hand, instinctually, went back to the butt of his gun at his waist.

Zhora chopped hard against his wrist, he gave a yowl of pain. She stood over him for a moment. She crouched down and started to twist his tie around, slowly throttling him. He looked up at her and saw the ferocity in her face.

The 'Little Bo-Beeps' were coming back into the dressing-room after their show. She decided to run for it. She bolted for the door pushing past them, pushing them aside. Zhora couldn't see Deckard take the gun out of his waistband holster. Or that he immediately dropped it to the floor as his hand and body went limp as he momentarily blacked out. He came round with the breasts of various of the 'Little Bo-Beeps' swinging in his face as they bent over him. There was a mix of voices around him as he came to.

\- 'Are you all right?'

\- 'It looks like he's been kicked in the head'

\- 'I think it was Rachael'

\- '...that's why she was running outta here'

\- 'He got his head kicked-in? By a girl?!'

The stage manager appeared, standing among them, 'What's he doing in here? What have I told you bitches about...'

'It wasn't us,' the 'Little Bo-Beeps' chorused in protest. 'It was Rachael,' one of them added. Deckard held his fake State Committee of Moral Abuses I.D. at him.

Somewhere, far away, he heard a voice say, 'What is _that_?'

Deckard looked about him, 'Zhora?' he said.

'Who?' one of the Bo-Beeps queried.

'Zhora. She just ran out.'

'Oh. That's Rachael.'

Deckard's head swam. 'Rachael?'

'Yeah,' a few of them answered together. Deckard crinkled his brow. He couldn't think straight. He couldn't think bendy. Or any other way. He couldn't think, period. There was a distant insistance in his brain, for some reason, that told him to get up but his body wanted to pass out. He could feel himself drifiting off again.

'Well. We can't leave him lying here,' the stage manager said to the gathered Bo-Beeps. 'C'mon pal,' he said, as he grabbed an arm and hauled Deckard to his feet.

'Drizapone? Anyone got any Drizapone?' Deckard asked.

'Sure,' he heard a voice say. 'Here have one.' He felt a pill being pressed into his hand. He pushed it into his mouth, threw his head back and gulped it down. 'Here, I'll pay you now.' He grabbed in his pocket and pulled out his Way-2-Pay card. He reeled again.

'Whoa, watch yourself,' the stage manager said. Almost instantly Deckard could feel the restorative of the Drizapone raising him up. He stood away from the stage manager's supporting arm. 'I'm alright - I'll be alright.'

He set off after Zhora.

As he left the dressing-room he heard one of the women say, 'Well. He's really committed to driving out moral abuses, anyway. What'd Rachael do anyway?' And another voice said, 'She's odd. That one. I don't like her. Lets hope he gets her...'

He blundered down the corridor, repeating generally, to anyone. 'Where'd the girl go. The one who ran out?' Looking blearily around him as he did so. One of the Showgirls pointed to the stage door which was swinging open. Deckard ran out. A light rain was falling, the start of the night-rains. It was like a cool thirst quenching drink on a hot day to him now. He ran from the stage door down the back-alley and into the neon and LED lit Olmec Avenue.

He immediately bumped into an old woman and knocked her over and ran on. He stumbled into a crepe vendor and knocked over his stand. He blundered down the street looking about him for any sign of the fleeeing figure. A policeman appeared at his shoulder and grabbed him and started to query him. What did he think he was doing knocking people and vendor stands over. Deckard looked away from scanning the street and looked at the policeman for a moment, 'SFPD. In pursuit. I need your help. Did you see a woman run along here?'

'Some I.D.' the patrolman insisted. Deckard was distracted, he continued looking around the street as he fished in his jacket pocket and pressed his I.D. into the patrolman's hand.

'The State Committee of Moral Abuses? What's this supposed to be?'

Deckard was still looking around the street.

'Huh?' he said. Deckard fished back in his jacket pocket and flashed his SFPD I.D. instead. He took the State Committee I.D. back off the policeman and crumpled it up and chucked it in the gutter. 'A little subterfuge. That's all.' He felt himself getting better by the moment as the Drizapone coursed through his veins. 'We've got to intercept this woman. She is an accessory after the fact. She's my only lead. Did you see a woman running out of that alleyway?' He stabbed a finger at the alley next to Exotica. 'Wearing a Roman skirt, grieves and a breastplate.'

'No, sir. And no one dressed like that came past me. I was over there.' He pointed to a corner mid-way along Olmec.

'That's good,' Deckard said. 'She must've gone this way.' It was the way toward the Livestock Market, the way Deckard had come. 'Bad move, Zhora. There's less junctions that way. But we'll lose her for sure if she makes it to the Market.'

'I'll call it in,' the patrolman said. Deckard set off again.

The rain had started to fall heavily. It had been hotter than usual all day, so it raised the humidity. The rain on the hot road was condensing as soon as it hit the surface. A fine wispy mist was rising all along the Avenue. There was steam rising from grilles and out of the kerbside food joints, that all set-up after 4:30 in the afternoon. The sizzle of food in woks and on griddles and in frying pans merged with the sizzle of the traffic on the wet road surface. When it was moving. There were taxi's as far as the eye could see. All of this busy scene was set to the rythmn of the rain, now beating hard on the vehicle roofs.

Deckard tried to get a clear run through the street. It wasn't easy. It was late afternoon and the post-work rush had started. Twenty minutes earlier and Zhora would've been easy to spot. But now, the urban tribes were emerging for the night, and would remain from now til way past three in the morning.

There were Dudes, GangStars, Hoodlums, Nutters, Persauders, Tarts, Riche-Biche, Workers, Salarymen, Drones, Mohawks, Dead-heads, Hop-heads, Pill-heads, Pulps, Punks, Starry-eyed, Empty-eyed, Screws, Slashers, Strutters. Peaks, Combs. Plumes. Jaygoes. There was even a group of Krishna, Hari, Hari, Krishna's in a line, like split orange juice seeping on the sidewalk.

Just the usual crowd. For Olmec Avenue.

Deckard ran into the road and slowed down to a walking pace beside a slow-moving tram. Out of the corner of his eye he saw what he took to be Zhora's head through the tram's windows, walking along on the other side. She was now wearing the plumed helmet that completed the outfit with the large screen-visor over the eyes. Does she have a trace on me on that screen? He stepped up onto the tram's platform and then through to the other side and alighted. In a few moments she had gone. How? He stepped back up onto the tram's platform for an elevated view scanning up and down the street. All of a sudden the policeman reappeared at his side. He told Deckard that they had set up a patrol car at either end of the Avenue. Deckard pointed to him to cover the other side of the Avenue, the one Deckard himself had been moving down. He would now cover this side, the side that he'd seen Zhora on. The tram had started to move off at a pace. Deckard knew he must have passed her. He alighted again.

The Encounter Bar area was petering out and the crowds were getting thinner. Deckard called over to the policeman to walk back the way they had come. They continued up the road past the entrance to the Exotica. That is when Deckard saw the back of her plumed helmet. She could have dipped into any of the Encounter Bars but she hadn't. She really must have somewhere to go. Perhaps the replicants were keeping seperate from each other and had agreed rendezvous points and times. She was walking briskly some way ahead. Just as he saw her, she hesitated and turned around. She had spotted the road-block at that end of the avenue. She started walking back down the road, looking about for some place to go. Deckard lowered his head so that it was covered by the bobbing heads of the throng. He was figuring the best way to get a shot at her. He raised his head. She was getting quite close, looking at the premises along that side of the street. Looking for any way out of the trap that had been set. In an instant she turned her head and recognised him. She immediately leapt onto a car parked-up and deftly jumped over onto the roof of a slow moving vehicle. He waved over the road at the uniform and stabbed a finger in the direction of Zhora's fleeing back. He ran out into the road, and with the other policeman they pursued her.

She was heading for the multi-glazed boxed frontage of Menagerie. Each of the glass 'boxes' were made to hold a different dancer, except there were no dancers at this time of day, other than a solitary one in the box nearest the entrance door, that faced directly onto the sidewalk.

'SFPD,' Deckard called out, 'Stop!'

Zhora looked back as she lept off a car roof, Deckard saw the look of cornered fear in her face for the moment it was turned towards him. He followed, moving sideways to get a better angle of shot.

'Move!' he shouted to the crowds, 'Get out of the way!' They looked about themselves and were startled to see him, gun drawn and aimed, as though aiming at them. They got out of the way.

Zhora dashed into the grid of glazed boxes of Menagerie from the leftward end. The boxes were arranged three deep and five wide. Behind them was the entrance to Menagerie itself. She had to run to the right and that brought her fleeing figure directly into Deckard's sightline. He fired. He hit her in the right shoulder. Zhora crashed into the glass box that the solitary dancer occupied. She slammed into the dancer and slipped, smearing blood off her back onto the dancer. Zhora's momentum carried her crashing into the next glass box behind. She stumbled and slumped to the floor, half in the box, half out. The glass cut her skin on her knees and arms. She stayed still for a few moments and Deckard moved closer. She still managed to get up. Deckard was standing about fifteen feet away now. Zhora moved on. Now with a limp. To get into the door of Menagerie. Deckard stood on the sidewalk and followed her step-for-step as she ran through the grid of glazed boxes and faced the Bar's entrance.

'Stop!' he shouted again. Deckard noticed she had a large curved shard of glass stuck in her left thigh. He got another clear shot. This hit Zhora directly in the spinal column just below the neck, severing all functions from the brain. She stumbled and fell to the left, she crashed headlong into the last glass box on the last row, the one immediately before the entrance to Menagerie.

She lay prone.

The crazy patterns of the smashed remains of the brightly lit glass boxes looked like an out-of-season winter frieze - all jagged ice of the broken glass and snow drifts of the shatter-proof glass. Deckard wearily walked forward into the debris. The shattered glass lay in heaps, crystal reflecting and refracting the red and orange neon and the bright white LED's of Olmec.

The lone dancer appeared at his shoulder, shouting and crying and screaming at him, seemingly all at once. She started to beat her fists against his arm and slap his face repeatedly. A couple of the cops came up and restrained her and led her away for assaulting a police officer.

'Didn't you just see what he did?' she spat the words in Deckard's direction. 'And you're arresting me?!' she wailed.

Another couple of police checked Zhora. They turned her over onto her back, checked her vitals. Deckard noticed that as they turned her it was as though rigor mortis had immediately set in. Her body was almost entirely rigid and there was a waxy appearance to her skin.

A uniform challanged him. He flashed his I.D. at them, 'Deckard. B26354.' He nodded his head down at the remains of Zhora and reeled off the case against. 'Assaulting a police officer. Attempt to kill. Accessory after the fact. Evading arrest.' As though he would win a holiday in the Carribean if he could make the list longer. The uniform examined his I.D. 'What's this?' she asked.

'What's what?'

'This. S.A? Never heard of it.'

'Special Assignment.'

'Precinct?'

'Sunset and McKinley.'

'OK,' she said, and handed the I.D. back to him.

Deckard left the clean-up to the uniformed division. He reholstered his gun and started to walk down the Avenue. The crowd around the shooting parted to let him through. Like the showgirl back at Exotica, a lot of them looked at him as though he were diseased. He was used to that look.

He walked down Olmec and stopped at a kerb-side vendor.

'What's your order?' the woman asked.

'Tsingtao.'

'You know you've got blood on your face?' she said as she turned to pick the bottle off the shelf.

'Yeah,' he said.

'What was that that was happening down the avenue? Any excitment?'

'No. A fugitive got shot.'

'Again?'

Deckard nodded.

He was rooting around in his wallet for his Way-2-Pay card to pay for the bottle when he felt a sharp tap on his right shoulder. He turned and saw that it was Gaff, using his dragonheaded cane. Deckard grabbed the cane and yanked it out of his hand. He was about to break the cane over his leg, but stopped.

'Bryant,' Gaff said tersely. Deckard threw the cane down into the street. 'Fetch,' he said.

Gaff looked at where his cane landed in the gutter then looked deep into Deckard's face.

'Cracking?' Gaff asked.

'I'm supposed to be retired from this.'

'Bryant's over there,' Gaff pointed at a police car on the other side of the street, and limped off to pick up his cane.

Bryant sat in the car and waited for the gull-wing to rise and got out of the vehicle. He lifted his collar against the rain and hauled the brim of his hat down low as a squall of wind along the avenue whipped the night-rains directly into his face.

'What was that all about?' Bryant asked him, indicating Gaff picking up his cane.

Deckard shrugged, 'He dropped his cane.'

'Christ, Deckard,' Bryant exclaimed, 'I saw what you did to that skin on the sidewalk. You blew her spine to hell. What are you using? That's more than just dum-dum's. You using some sort of explosive tips? A personal modification of yours. Is that it? Just as well you're SFPD, Deckard, otherwise I'd be cuffing you now. We want these replicants off the streets but we don't gun-anarchy, y'understand me.'

Deckard was still half-breathless and weakened from the blows Zhora had hit him with back in the dressing-room. He tried a nonchalent smile but it looked more like a grimace. Bryant looked him over.

'Je-sus H. Christ, Deckard,' Bryant said, 'And you look almost as bad as that skin-job you left back there.'

Gaff appeared again, leaning on his cane. He looked resentfully up at Deckard. Bryant added as an aside to Gaff, 'There's a lot of people in the department who could learn from this guy, Gaff. He's a god-damned one-man slaughterhouse. One down. Four more to go.' Bryant stooped to get back into the policecar.

Deckard's expression changed, to one of puzzlement. 'Three. Three more to go,' he said.

'Four.'

'Three,' Deckard insisted. Bryant turned back to face Deckard, 'I haven't been able to get in touch with you. I checked with Tyrell, like you wanted me to do. That skin you failed on the VK at Tyrell. Rachael. She's disappeared. Didn't know it's a replicant. Something to do with the brain implant says Tyrell.'

'I know. I put in my report. Anyhow, you got me in to do four. I've done one, that leave's three.'

'As many as it takes, Deckard. It's absconded. It's now on the list. C'mon Gaff. Let's go.' Bryant climbed back into the vehicle. 'I'd give you a lift but, as you can see its only a two-person cabin. You look terrible Deckard. Get one of the cops up there,' he stabbed his thumb to where Zhora had been shot, 'to give you a taxi ride home. Huh?'

Gaff walked around the vehicle. He looked at Deckard, lifted the dragonheaded cane to the brim of his hat and got in the car.


End file.
